HR Help Desk Software – Improve your HR Service Delivery
Improve HR Service with HR Help Desk Software, sometimes called HR Ticketing Software. When people think of help desk software, they probably don’t immediately think of human resources. Help desk software is traditionally associated with addressing technical problems with software or computers but your HR team can benefit from it as well.
What is HR Help Desk Software?
HR help desk software a.k.a HR Management Software or HR Ticketing Software is a platform that human resources can use to improve service, track users’ requests, and reduce costs. Just like IT help desks, HR help desk software can automate time-consuming manual tasks and organize high quantities of information to make the job of HR professionals easier. There are some software vendors out there that make software specifically for managing HR tasks and are not meant for IT departments or typical help desks but a traditional help desk ticketing system can usually be customized and used by HR. There are also some benefits to having the HR and IT departments using the same software platform. Benefits such as a single vendor for licenses and support renewals, a single vendor for support and a single technology for the company to support for both departments.
If your HR team has ever been frustrated and overwhelmed by an influx of requests that they can’t possibly handle in a timely manner, then your business should consider using help desk ticketing software to help. Without the right software to help the HR team, even standard requests can become difficult to handle as they build up. Help desk software can change all of that.
The days of trying to organize scattered emails, sticky notes, and phone calls, without a centralized system to track everything are long gone. With the time they save from not having to manage all of these individual processes, HR professionals will be able to focus more time on work that’s critical to the business.
Common Requests and Queries the Software Can Help With
Your HR team is bound to get a large number of requests and queries from employees, after all, that’s what they’re there for, but that doesn’t mean they have to become overwhelmed by them. Simply by applying help desk software to HR processes, HR can immediately become more organized and more effective. The software will track requests and even automatically prioritize those that contain more pressing issues. These features and others are all part of How to Start a World-Class Help Desk. By implementing help desk software, handling any requests/inquiries will be simpler. Some examples of requests the software might help your HR team solve include:
- Benefits Offered by the Company – Though the information may or may not be available elsewhere, employees will often come to HR with questions about the benefits they are entitled to such as allowances for commuting costs and different insurance plans. Generally, these questions could be answered with a redirect to a knowledge base.
- Referrals and Recruitment – Similarly, employees will be interested in finding out more about any bonuses they might receive for referring friends or family to work at the company. Who will they turn to for more information? Human resources, in all likelihood. Help desk software can help the HR team from having to answer repeat questions over and over again from different employees.
- Ethics and Norms – If an employee has an inquiry about the company culture or ethical standards, one of the first places they’re likely to go is to human resources. These questions could be sensitive in nature so being able to handle them efficiently and effectively is a major benefit of using help desk software.
- Vacation Time and Other Policies – Managing even a small team’s vacation time and holidays can be stressful so it’s a relief for HR teams to have capable software on their side to help.
All of these different kinds of requests can either be rerouted to a centralized knowledge base built off of previous solved requests or handled through a ticketing system. And yes, HR needs ticketing just like the IT department does.
Why HR Needs Ticketing
To reduce the amount of time your HR department employees spend dealing with administrative work that’s secondary at best to their actual jobs, you need an HR ticketing system. A ticketing system will be part of any HR management or help desk software that you use and it’s a particularly useful feature. Why? Well, all those knowledge requests listed above like vacation and benefits shouldn’t need to constantly be answered individually. That’s a waste of time for everyone involved, especially the HR professionals who have to keep repeating themselves.
HR management software can take care of that problem. By combining ticketing and a comprehensive knowledge base, the software will eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) the need for the HR department to repeatedly address the same issues. It can automatically direct the standard inquiries to the knowledge base where those questions have already successfully been answered. The software will then direct the remaining requests, those that do actually require the active attention of the HR department, into the ticketing system.
Within the ticketing system, the HR team can address each issue promptly and without unnecessary complications. To start, the software streamlines the process by providing ticket templates. This way, the HR team can decide ahead of time what kinds of information they’re likely to need while handling a ticket and let the employee use a template to get all that information across. The HR management software will organize parent/child templates, time tickets, schedule tickets, and more to make the process go more smoothly. It can also automatically convert emails into tickets for a more consolidated experience. If a ticket needs to be escalated and additional personnel notified, the software can handle that, too. There may be times when the HR professional initially assigned to a ticket is no longer able to address all of the employee’s needs alone which is where the collaboration features in the software come in. With skill routing to assign appropriate HR pros to each ticket, this shouldn’t need to happen often but if it does, it’s nice to know that the opportunity is there for the team to collaborate.
Unlike when HR handles requests over the phone or by email, using HR management software allows the HR team to keep track of key metrics over time. The more information you have about how your HR department is performing, the easier it will be to pinpoint weaknesses and start improving upon them. The reports you’ll receive from your HR management software will take your HR department to the next level.
Benefits of HR Help Desk Software
HR management software won’t only benefit your organization’s HR team. It will help the rest of your employees, too, and give your whole company a boost. These are just some of the benefits:
Better Employee Experience: One goal of human resources is to maintain high employee satisfaction. It isn’t always easy to do but having a user-friendly, efficient system for answering their HR-related inquiries will almost certainly improve the employee experience and thus the reputation of the HR department within the company. User-friendly means being easily accessible to employees through a simple interface, something the software can help with.
Boosted Productivity and Organization: Disorganization can quickly drag an otherwise great HR department down fast. The HR management software will handle all the repetitive tasks that have been taking up your HR professionals’ time to free them up to do what they do best. When they go to handle HR requests or issues, they’ll be nicely organized in one consolidated system. It doesn’t get easier than that.
Increasing Knowledge Base: As mentioned previously, one of the significant advantages of using comprehensive help desk software in HR processes as well as IT processes is the building of a constantly growing knowledge base. Some HR management software will automatically convert answers to common requests into part of a knowledge base that other employees with the same problem can refer to later.
Greater Privacy and Confidentiality: Even beyond the moral drive to do so, companies often have a legal obligation to protect employee information. The data segregation settings included in most help desk software will help keep HR requests private. Given the sensitive nature of some HR dealings, this will almost certainly come in handy at some point.
Justify the Need for More Staff: Using help desk software in human resources means your company will have all the data they need readily available to justify bringing on additional staff members or not. Software like this can take a lot of the guesswork out of making business decisions like hiring choices which is a significant help.
Remote Optimization: Staff working from home or other remote locations has the potential to make HR work even more difficult in some respects but not when your HR team is using HR management software. Even with time differences, employees will be able to get the information they need quickly.
Final Thoughts on Help Desk for Human Resources
Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that help desk software is just for managing IT requests. If your organization isn’t using help desk software to improve HR processes, the whole organization is making things unnecessarily complicated and difficult. Don’t let your HR team waste time answering the same questions repeatedly or getting lost under piles of overlapping requests. HR management software can make those problems disappear.
You and your HR team don’t need to be technical experts to start making the most of HR management software so why wait? Find out more about HR management software here.
