Automating HR Processes in SME's
India is a hot bed for start-ups and mushrooming Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). India’s 1.3 million SMEs which employ close to 40% of India's workforce are responsible for generation millions of jobs. It therefore becomes important to channelize the HR processes for the benefit of a major chunk of working class.
Recently, a study conducted by Talent Management Institute (TMI) revealed that 98% engineering graduates are willing to work for SMEs. SMEs are defined as enterprises that employ a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 200 employees. Considering the fact that SMEs concentrate most of their workforce towards increasing day-to-day production, maintaining a HR team becomes less of a priority, for them. Moreover, apart from the regular HR related activities, the HR team also handles administration activities that eat up their time.
In any enterprise, the HR team handles a range of activities such as:
Recruitment and on-boarding
Training and Induction
Employee pay and benefits
Employee appraisal management
Employee work-timing tracking
Holiday and leave management
Employee feedback and retention
Employee exit/termination process
Employee Insurance and health-benefits
And much more
In SMEs, handling all of these activities require humongous amount of man-hours. This can be reduced if proper processes and an overall system is in place; a system that can record all the parameters /information pertaining to employees, and provide accurate and transparent output when needed.
Benefits for SMEs:
Automation reduces the requirement of more man-power thereby providing an opportunity to hire for other departments
Adopting automation reduces manual work, giving more time to resources that can be utilized in other HR-related activities
A software provides insights into an employee’s entire history right from hiring to exit from the company
HR processes can be modified based on loopholes detected from the entire employee data of the company
A software reduces physical file-management and resulting chaos out of it
Supervisors get a better visibility into their employees’ work-progress and career-path
Employees based on their appraisal feedback can decide their growth in the company
Overall, HR with the help of a software can provide better feedback to different departments and aid in their growth.
Processes and systems play a vital role in stream-lining the way a company or a department functions. It leads to more visibility into operations and scope for improvement resulting out of constant feedback mechanism. HR is the backbone behind a successful employee-management system and a software strengthens the every aspect of its functions. For SMEs to grow and move up the industry ladders, all the departments need to work in tandem and HR is one amongst them. It should be treated on-par with other functions such as Sales, Marketing, and Client-services, to name a few.
The demand for automation is increasing day by day, indicating that HR technology is in the spotlight asking for more attention. HR is more of a strategic partner in the company rather than being just an employee and file managing department. Bringing in an automated system will not only ease input of information but also ensure that employees and the HR follow a proper process and minimize loop-holes that usually creep in its absence.
