Are you considering purchasing a recruitment & onboarding software, but aren’t entirely sure the benefits of doing so? After reading this article, you’ll know the three key benefits experienced by companies who introduce a recruitment and onboarding software, and have an in-depth understanding of the functionalities your chosen software should contain.
Pre-employment checks are the pinnacle of compliance. Every industry has particular requirements and checks that must be met before employment can be offered. Not only do these checks need to take place, but certifications need to be collected and stored as evidence for future audits. The certifications must be retractable on demand and easily accessible.
In this regard, compliance can be difficult to adhere to when it involves chasing paperwork, and printing or scanning documents…paperwork will always be misplaced throughout the process. Let’s look at how recruitment software helps with this:
Police Check : Initiate police checks from within your recruitment software. Track the progression of the check and store the certificates to your software.
Psychometric Talent Assessment: Candidates that apply for a specific role, or senior role, undergo a psychometric talent assessment. This can be conducted by AI, as a feature of your recruitment software, and in the initial stages of recruitment. Quick & reliable.
Working with children check: Refine applications by requiring candidates to upload their working with children certification in the initial stages of recruitment. The documents are saved to the candidate profile and are easily accessible.
Reference Checks: Create templates for reference checks based on relevant questions that are appropriate to each department, then initiate the reference check from within your platform and have the answers stored & saved to the candidate’s permanent profile.
ID Check & Document Verification Check: The stages of progression are visible from your platform, and the certifications are stored to your platform for easy reference.
There are only a few examples! It’s almost impossible NOT to be compliant with this system in place.
Influenced by the global pandemic, business operations are drastically changing on a daily basis. An influx in case numbers will result in business’ closing down or workforces operating remotely. In order to be COVID-compliant, these changes require immediate action, and are made possible through implementing a recruitment software.
Your recruitment software acts as a 2-way communication channel. You can send bulk sms & emails to appropriate stakeholders from one location, and view all responses from the same location. All history of communication is forever saved to the stakeholder’s profile, therefore generating a recorded timeline for immediate recollection. This serves as legitimate evidence to demonstrate the company has been operating compliantly.
Recruitment and onboarding software allows you to custom build your workflows. You can save workflows as templates, and create as many templates as your business needs. This means, next time you need to send a request-to-recruit, the workflow with the appropriate stakeholders (or approvers) is already created and can be generated in a few clicks. This means all the necessary approvers are notified, and the request-to-recruit is trackable. Instead of taking days, this process has the potential to be initiated and completed within minutes.
This customisation cements compliance into every workflow, therefore eliminating the risk of carrying out recruitment activities that are nullified as it wasn’t approved by the appropriate stakeholders.
This integration should be seen as a necessity for onboarding new hires. Why, you ask? Once the onboarding process has begun, the system will auto-trigger your LMS to release the appropriate training material set for the role (based on stages and departments custom set by you). This means all new hires receive the same training, and correct training, ensuring there’s no miscommunications and every new hire has standardised training.
How can an employee stay within the appropriate measures of acting compliant if they don’t know what violates regulations and protocols? Better yet, if they can’t spot noncompliant activities, how can they report it? With internal and external regulations constantly evolving it’s crucial new employees and existing employees are easily reached to provide them with updated training material, and more so, that HR can determine who has completed their training and who hasn’t. This deters the costs of behaving in an in-compliant manner (such as fines, building a bad reputation, regular audits which interrupt business processes, losing existing business etc).
Double, or triple handling data is like putting a blindfold on before reviewing information. When multiple people insert the same data there’s always going to be inconsistencies and errors, have you ever played Chinese whispers? Human error is a real thing!
These data inaccuracies can cause problems, such as overpaying or underpaying an employee. If data is found to be inconsistent or incorrect when undergoing an audit, or retracing a data flow, it results in lower data integrity- which reduces the reliability and validity of your processes and outcomes. It’s one thing for a business to be compliant, it’s another to prove it to internal or external authorities.
Your recruitment and onboarding software saves and stores data to the platform, and carries the input data from process to process (ie; request-to-recruit to recruitment etc). The data must only be inserted ONCE, ensuring the data is accurate, thus establishing data integrity whilst simultaneously reducing the manual input required by employees. As the software is SaaS based, all data is tractable, reportable and reusable.
Therefore, internal and external authorities know the data is reliable and valid, and can be used as evidence in any situation.
All actions conducted through your recruitment software are stored to the SaaS platform and can be viewed at any time and by all users with access. This creates complete transparency between recruiters, hiring managers and executives. Every user is accountable for their actions which makes it easier for HR to review actions and decisions and ensure they are determined based on logic. This consistent regulation urges employees to conduct themselves in a compliant manner.
The frequency of audits will depend on the business and industry, such as a pharmacy undergoing an audit annually. As well as expected audits, it acts as a defence when an unhappy candidate is filing unfair dismissal or prejudice, as each user is accountable for their actions and each action is saved to the software. This provides reliable and valid evidence.
Whilst the pandemic will (hopefully) end soon, remote working is here to stay! The introduction of flexible work hours, work life balance and remote working is not something employees are eager to give up.
In order to effectively manage a remote workforce it’s important to implement processes that overcome issues remote working can surface (such as varying schedules, paper processes being delayed etc). Remote working encourages inefficiencies and stunts progression- if you let it. This is where your recruitment software comes in to save the day! Your recruitment software is digital, meaning remote working isn’t a problem because all users can access the platform from wherever, and whenever!
Your recruitment and onboarding process can’t be staggered, the disruptions at the foot of the next process directly affects the progression of recruitment and onboarding activities, and leads to unnecessary extended periods of time.
Your HRMS operations are indistinguishable from a real life ecosystem. Every system has its specific purpose, every function works to achieve the overall job completion. Individually the systems are useful, but coherently they are powerful.
This concept applies to your recruitment and onboarding ecosystem. One process enhances the next, and each functionality integrates seamlessly like a well oiled machine in order to achieve maximum efficiency output.
For example, your requisition data must flow into recruitment, then into onboarding and payroll. By streamlining all of these processes you make the job of recruiters and HR easier and quicker, allowing them to dedicate their time to other responsibilities and better use the company’s budget.
You and I both know the reason it’s called ‘snail mail’…It’s SO SLOW. We live in the 21st century, technology is too advanced to not utilise the efficiencies it offers. If you don’t use technology you disadvantage your business. By streamlining your processes you simultaneously eliminate the interruption of time delays.
Let’s revisit remote working and use it as an example:
If HR has filed a request-to-recruit, and you don’t use recruitment software, you’ll experience two time delays:
In the form of an email, sms or app notification, your recruitment software automatically notifies stakeholders when their approval or attention is required. It’s as quick as opening the notification and digitally signing the relevant e-form. 30 seconds, tops! Once the first approver has given their consent, the next is automatically notified and so on. Working alongside the efficiencies of automated notifications, all e-forms are accessible on mobiles and laptops. Therefore, removing the time delays embedded in paper processes and PDF processes, which stunts operational productivity and progression.
Human error isn’t something to be ashamed about, we all make mistakes. The mistakes aren’t the focal point, the focal point is recognising the existence of human error and putting practices in place to overcome it. You know what doesn’t make mistakes? Automations. AI. Technology. They’re computer based programs, meaning they don’t have the element of human error. Yes, sometimes your wifi drops out and your Microsoft Word comes up with the rainbow wheel of death, BUT, they do what they need to do and you know the process is accurate every time.
Your recruitment software consists of automated processes, custom built by you! Your needs, requirements and decisions are what drives the automations.
Here’s an example:
You customise your onboarding process to auto-trigger an email to certain stakeholders once an onboarding pack has been sent (ie; e: department leader, IT, HR). This email contains their start date and role outline to guarantee everything is organised for the new hire’s arrival (such as their email address, laptop/ phone, company intranet details). This means there’s no time delays, and everything is ready to go from the minute they walk in the door! By implementing automations such as this, your candidate experience and employee engagement is also improved.
Therefore, automations a) reduce the manual labour input by staff, and b) reduce the risk of human error, and c) create efficiencies.
How big is your budget for job listings? How often do you hire? If you hire frequently, you’ll know the huge cost of constantly advertising on job boards (such as Indeed, Seek, LinkedIn). How much money is invested into candidate sourcing and refining based on the time invested by HR/recruiters/ managers?
How do you overcome spending this unnecessary amount of money? Talent pools. Every time you advertise for a position, you can place tags against the profiles of the candidates that you interview that stand out but don’t quite fit the current position.This means, for future positions, you have a talent pool ready to contact without any advertising. You’ve already developed a relationship with them, and have basic insights into their hard skills, soft skills and potential.
Optimising efficiencies minimises waste, such as time delays and money misspent. When a business considers their current processes and improves them to operate at a greater scale of efficiency, such as in the recruitment and onboarding process, the outcome is of a greater standard and at a quicker rate. Efficiencies implemented in requisition, recruitment, onboarding and payroll integration result in a short time to hire…what used to take months now can be done in a matter of weeks!
This means the company hires quicker, and removes the time periods of unproductiveness caused by lack of resources, and existing employees’ attention being spread thinly through uptaking additional responsibilities.
Therefore, the company better invests their resources when their processes are streamlined and efficient, reducing the cost of inefficiency and obtaining maximum output.
Mis-hiring is common in business’, especially for specialised roles. In fact, 74% of businesses admitted to making the wrong hiring decision for a position, which cost them $14,900 (per position). Whilst there are measures in place to protect the company and allow a fair dismissal (such as probation period) this is an incredibly costly mistake.
The time and effort employees have invested into recruiting, onboarding and training a new employee is misspent. Not only has this time been misspent, it must be invested again for another new hire!
How do we reduce this risk? We unearth personality traits, soft skills and potential BEFORE hiring them! Within your recruitment software, you have access to features including video interviews and psychometric talent assessments. Both of these features reveal extensive insights into the candidates that allow you to make a better hiring decision based on accurate conclusions. Therefore, significantly reducing the risk of a mis-hiring and being proactive in not misspending the company’s money.
As outlined above; compliance, efficiency and cost-effectiveness are the three key benefits of introducing a recruitment and onboarding software to your business. If you’re like me and you must see something to believe it, click here to test MyRecruitment+ completely free.