10 Features every Employee Self Service Portal should have!

Every employee self service module should have at least the following features:

1. Payslips Online: The Employee Self Service allows employees to access or print payslips any time. The ESS portal displays payslips for all time, so the employees can access payslips in the past. This saves time compared to printing and handing over hard copies of payslips to employees.

1. Leave Application and Approval: Employee Self Service allows employees to apply for leaves from Mobile Phones, Desktops or Kiosks. Also lets the managers to approve or reject requests from Mobile Phones. Employees and Managers can access the ESS from any where, even when they are at home. This saves time and resources compared to submitting a leave application in a paper based approval system.

1. Online Punching: Online Punching enables employees to mark attendance even when they are travelling. Employees can Clock In & Clock Out with GPS location. This allows managers to track employee travel path.

1. Employee Attendance: Employees can view their own attendance on the ESS Portal. This helps employees to approve that the attendance is ready for payroll processing. If there is any discrepancy, employees can raise a request to correct the attendance.

1. Attendance Regularization: Attendance Regularization enables employees to correct their own attendance. Employees can view their own attendance and if any changes are required, they can raise a request on ESS to correct the attendance. Once managers approve the request, the attendance updates by itself.

1. Shift Details on Phone: Employees can view their shift details from their Mobile Phones. This allows managers to easily notify employees about frequent shift changes. Shift calendar allows employees to have an overview of their shifts for the month.

1. HR Documents online: The Employee Self Service portal allows the company to publish Policy documents which can be accessed by the employees. This makes it easy to publish company policy updates for employees.

1. Employee Documents: Employees can upload their documents on the ESS Portal which can be accessed by HR users. This makes it easy for HR Users to organize documents against each employee.

1. Notifications and Alerts: Employee Self Service generates notifications and alerts for the HR, Managers and the employees such as Passport expiry, Driving License expiry, Shift Change, Birthday, Anniversary, Upcoming Holiday, and so on.

1. Income Tax Declarations: In some countries, income tax is calculated based on income from salary and also from other income and investments as declared by the employee. The ESS Portal makes it easy for employees to make declarations online, which helps the HR users to calculate income tax without manual intervention.

The Employee Self Service Portal also generates the following benefits:

1. Reduces Costs: Employee Self Service has direct impact on the administrative costs. No more printing payslips and reports.

1. Improves efficiency: Employees can view attendance before it gets processed for payroll, they can also raise requests to make corrections on attendance; this eliminates the need for correction in payslips.

1. Enhances Communication: Employees can make requests for documents like Experience Certificates, Attendance Corrections, Leave, Holiday, Vacation, and so on. This results in easier communication among employee, manager and HR team. The organization can communicate policies by sharing them on the Employee Self Service Portal.

1. Provides Transparency: Employees can view their daily attendance on a graphical interface; this helps them to ensure that the company has captured the right data to process payroll.

1. Eliminates Paper: Employee Self Service enables employees, managers and HR to communicate over electronic media rather than on paper. Save paper, go green!

1. Saves time: Employee Self Service enables employees to make requests from mobile phones and also allows managers to approve requests from mobile phones; this saves a lot of time compared to paper based approval system.

7. Enables Instant Decision Making: Employee Self Service provides detailed data to managers and HR to make instant decisions. For eg: when a manager is about to approve a leave request, the ESS provides details about the employee’s leave balance, snapshot of attendance for the requested period, list of subordinates on leave in the same period, and so on.