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ESS or employee self-service portals help both employees and HR teams save time while accessing information related to leaves, payroll, employee benefits, etc., and focus on things that matter.
Let’s face it – managing administrative tasks not only hampers employee productivity but also takes a toll on their core responsibilities.
Global surveys have revealed that 54% of employees are interrupted from their work a few times or more per month to spend time looking for or trying to get access to information, insights, and answers.
In this blog, we’ll show you how the adoption of an ESS or employee self-service portal can change that along with mentioning several other benefits.
What is an ESS or employee self-service portal?
ESS or Employee self-service portals are tools used by companies to enable employees to carry out some HR, IT and administrative tasks on their own. These include updating personal information, applying for leaves, managing insurance plans, and other benefits.
An ESS portal can help HRs save a lot of time and shift focus from manually intensive tasks to more important work. Additionally, it can also help in streamlining administrative tasks as it consolidates knowledge from various web pages, ensuring that employees spend less time information hunting.
Elements of an employee self-service portal
An ESS portal can perform several functions. It empowers employees to self-serve and be less reliant on HR. Here are some of the elements of a typical ESS tool:
1. View documents and letters
Employees and HR can share, update and view multiple documents on an ESS portal. Investment declaration proofs such as -house rent allowance, education loan statements are a few examples. The HR department can also use the portal to share and distribute documents like the employee handbook, notices, and company policies.
Not only does this unify all the information but also creates a single source of information for your employees, irrespective of their geographical locations.
2. Payroll information at fingertips
A major function of an ESS portal is to let employees manage their payroll related information. This makes it easier for employees to access their payslips anytime, anywhere. Especially when they’re applying for credit cards, leasing houses, or even getting a loan.
Some advanced ESS portals integrate payroll software as well. With this, employees can declare taxes and investments from the ESS portal itself. RazorpayX Payroll is one such software that creates a one-stop shop for employees and contractors to access payslips, Form 16s, and declare investments. It automates statutory compliances by handling payments like TDS, PF, PT, and ESIC filings.
3. Leave and attendance tracking
Employees can apply for leaves and time off on the ESS portal. Managers can review the applications on the portal itself and grant or deny leave requests in minutes. Along with a system for tracking leaves, an ESS portal helps managers to track attendance.
This ensures that there is no human error. Traditional attendance keeping systems like registers, papers cards, or punching can result in erroneous records.
Advantages of having an employee self-service portal
An ESS portal digitises several HR processes. Here are some of the benefits of having an employee portal:
1. Ease of access
ESS portals give employees access to their essential data. Employees can simply log on to the online portal for various documents, their payroll, payslips, attendance and leave data. This ensures that they can promptly and easily get required documents without having to request the overburdened HR departments.
2. One-stop shop for employee data
An employee self-service portal can act as a record book of all employee data. Their personal information, leave records, all documents and company communication can be stored in one place. Hence, employees don’t have to switch from one portal to another for finding information. This improves the overall employee experience.
3. Personalised experience
Personalisation has become the holy grail of employee experience. It is especially useful when employees are spread across various geographical locations. An ESS or employee self-service portal allows employees to view information relevant to them and easily differentiate between information meant for organisation-wide circulation and individual intimation.
4. Safe and secure
An employee self-service portal contains sensitive employee information, which is why it is imperative to have a secure system. Typically, it has a firewall to protect employee information and company documents. Thus, ESS portals ensure not only easy but safe access to all the important information as opposed to traditional methods of information management.
RazorpayX Payroll: India’s best payroll software integrated with ESS portal
- RazorpayX Payroll facilitates employees to access payslips, manage taxes and leaves in one place.
- It allows the direct deposit of salaries into employees’ bank accounts after considering leaves and other deductions. It also automates compliance like TDS, PT, PF and ESIC.
- Finally, it extends insurance coverage to employees automatically.
Get started with RazorpayX Payroll today!
The icing on the cake: Integration with Slack
With our latest integration with Slack, employees can execute common payroll tasks related to leaves, reimbursements, and payslips from Slack itself. Not only this saves time but also gets rid of portal switching which every employee loathes.
Know more about the RazorpayX Payroll Slack app
