The Thanksgiving dishes have been cleared away and the sprint toward Christmas is gaining speed. December may be one of the most difficult months of the year to stay focused on work, but it’s also one of the busiest months for many companies. If that’s true for your sales team, it’s equally true for your HR department. It may seem impossible to manage employee time requests, seasonal hiring, holiday pay and all the paperwork that goes with the season.
But don’t worry. That’s what your HRIS is for.
Here are five HRIS tools that can make this your best holiday season ever:
- PTO Calendar: Get Home For the Holidays—It’s that time of year when everyone and their cousin wants extra time off. If you don’t have a plan, squabbles can break out over who submitted their request first and who deserves first pick of holiday time. Many HRIS systems include a PTO calendar where employees or managers can see who has already requested or received time off for a given day. The calendar makes it much easier to fit PTO requests into your existing schedule, and managers will have an easier time filling shifts if they can see at a glance who is planning to take vacation.
- Social Message Boards: Send a Letter to Your Secret Santa—Communication breakdowns can throw a wrench in your well-oiled machine—but they don’t have to. Whether you’re planning a holiday party, welcoming new temporary staff, or providing a way for employees to interact about the office Secret Santa, social message boards make it easy to keep everyone on the same page.
- Goal Setting: Make That Goal List and Check It Twice—When we enter the home stretch just before Christmas (i.e., the entire month of December), it can be difficult for employees to keep their heads in the game. Goal setting functions let you set specific productivity, training, or personal goals for each employee. As workers check off completed goals, managers can see who is meeting expectations and who might need a little extra motivation.
- Mobile Clock In/Clock Out: Work at Home, ‘Cause Baby It’s Cold Outside—During the holidays, employees may be working at different locations or they may take advantage of flexible work policies to work at home. Mobile time management options make it easy to clock in and out with a smartphone, laptop, or tablet. Geofencing pinpoints an employee’s location using the GPS coordinates on his or her phone so you can see at a glance where they clocked in. Most systems can also identify the IP address from which the employee clocked in so you can identify time punches at different locations.
- Applicant Tracking System: It’ll Be a Blue Christmas Without Your Seasonal Workers—If you hire additional staff during the holiday season, the applicant tracking system in your HRIS can help you sort resumes, screen candidates, and evaluate based on test results. Some can also hide demographic information to place all applicants on an even playing field, which is an excellent way to promote skills-based hiring.
If your Christmas wish involves avoiding the annual rush of PTO requests, office hoopla, and extra recruiting demands, let your HRIS help you out this year.
Don’t have these features in your current software? Maybe it’s time for an update. Check out our HRIS comparison tool to find a software system that can help you grant your Christmas wish!
