HR Employee Self Service

Employee Self Service (ESS) is rapidly growing in popularity as a tool used by management to save time and money, as well as improving employee performance and morale. This powerful concept is actually very simple--employees are given access to the company's information network so that they are able to take care of administrative tasks themselves, view their information, and have easy access to answers to commonly asked questions. As the administrator of an ESS module, you want the ability to customize the software that you select, however, so that employees do not have unrestricted access to confidential information.

For example, you may want an employee to be able to enter his personal information when he is first hired. You'll want details like contact information, financial information for taxes and direct deposit, and family information for benefits administration. Some companies would choose to allow an employee to input this information directly into an ESS computer, while others would prefer to have the information given in hard copy, even though that requires someone in HR to spend time on data entry.

Access to HR Employee Self Service Modules

Security and confidentiality are of the utmost importance if you introduce an ESS software system into your workplace, however. Some companies choose to have a remote system that employees can access from any computer with internet access, even from home. You might put training materials online and instruct employees to view them from home, setting your program to keep track of when they are viewed.

For more restricted access, you can allow someone to connect to the ESS system only through specific computers on-site, and also make sure that these computers cannot burn data to a disk or send it via email. This may be useful if you want people to be able to view or upload records, but not to take any information off-site. Choose a software program that is backed up by 24 hour technical support, as well as one with state-of-the-industry encryption and automatic updates against known threats to computer networks.