Andy Shettle
Chief Product Officer
Employee Relations (ER) cases are complex – tracking, recording and monitoring cases from initial referral to HR through to the final steps takes time, and a lot of data to manage and track.
In a paper-based office, processes such as these are convoluted and time-consuming. This is where it is most important to use a software system, which includes AI and automation functionality, to increase efficiency of the HR team and case management.
It’s difficult to avoid the hype surrounding automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). On one side you have the dreamers that believe both will revolutionise the work place and society, on the other you have the decriers shout loudly that it will put lower skilled employees out of work. The reality is somewhere in between however; automation provides the opportunity to provide better compliance, improved efficiency and visibility, and reduced costs.
HR is a perfect area to take advantage of these new technologies. If you could implement a digital system that can reduce the amount of time employees remain on sick leave, reduce the costs of Employee Relations cases, and even proactively identify trends that can reduce further ER cases from occurring - whilst also freeing up HR administrator’s time - you could drastically improve your business’s HR function.
Now, more than ever, it is vital for HR teams to be as efficient as possible – with the fees for Employment Tribunals now scrapped, businesses can’t afford any mistakes in managing ER cases. Policies and procedures need to be followed correctly and in a timely fashion.
The benefits of automation begin on the transactional administrative tasks such as assigning cases to teams, cases automatically adhere to HR policy – there are no missed deadlines or human error. Case reminders set against tasks help HR personnel understand which cases are truly priorities so that they can be escalated and responded to more swiftly.
Automation can also help to simplify and increase productivity in day-to-day jobs. For example, checking and managing information such as sick days or holiday pay can be completed with a quick, intelligent search. This way of doing things completely removes the need to trawl through files or to send requests to corresponding employee manager. And this isn’t just great for the HR department - when the information is readily accessible to all of the people who might need it, the workflow is greatly simplified.
However, automation’s benefit extends extend far beyond just the administrative. It closes existing ER cases quicker and proactively prevents future cases from ever happening. It can uncover hidden or unknown trends in cases by identifying problematic departments, managers, or employees and enables HR teams to put preventative measure in place beforehand.
It is this level of analytics that make Selenity’s ER Tracker so advanced.
The right tools
ER Tracker from Selenity is HR case management software designed with the three stress points of a typical employment conflict or conduct issue in mind: the HR team or person performing line management, the employee, and the employer. It supports HR case management all the way through the process; giving greater compliance, visibility and efficiency on case types, such as: Grievance, Disciplinary, Long Term Sick Leave, or Employment Tribunal.
As well as ensuring procedures are correctly followed every time, providing compliant and consistent case outcomes, it resolve cases quicker and reduces case costs. Also offering proactive analysis, it helps to prevent cases by identifying trends and patterns.
A large percentage of ER Tracker’s features include automation and ensure efficiency across the HR function, including: alerts and reminders, real-time monitoring, auto-populated templates and centralised task management.
The proof is in the pudding
ER Tracker has enabled BrightHouse to centralise its employee relations HR function, simplify case reporting and support its employee relations strategy with the identification of case trends.
Louise Levy, Employee Relations Manager, BrightHouse explains, “ER Tracker gives us a really good way of reporting and a ‘reason for being’ as a department. The software has been designed to bring control back to the employee relations personnel and it has rapidly sped up the task of updating and reporting of employee relations’ cases on a weekly basis from four hours to under 30 minutes.
Employee relations’ cases are changing all the time. Previously, the centralised Excel spreadsheet would only allow one person to update a case on the system at a time. It was impossible to measure timelines or any trends in case types. ER Tracker is much more user friendly and gives the ER team the freedom to easily share case information and provide a better continuity of service.
Now, if someone from the employee relations team takes a call, any one of us can easily access the case notes online, and pick up the call for another division.”
It is easy to see why HR automation can greatly improve the efficiency of HR departments as well as the entire company. Decreasing error rates and increasing efficiency can help businesses to improve overall productivity and to manage and retain quality staff. HR automation means better HR management.
