There is often a common challenge for (HRM) human resource managers to provide better employee services and efficiency. Their timely response to this challenge has been through the deployment of Web-based solutions that provide the employees with self-service capabilities giving the entire workforce immediate access to vital information, helping retain and attract high quality employees and improving organizational communication.

Employee self service

The employee self-service (ESS) is an example of a web based self-service in a company. The EES system contains a combination of organizational change and technology that permits the user to interact directly with their HR manager data to review, inquire, and act upon transactions in the workplace.

The EES, as with the otherweb-basedself-services promises a streamlined, “paperless” office business processes, and the removal of direct administration for the HR since the staff and management can conduct basic transactions through the computer that initially had to be done by the HR staff on paper forms.

I concur with the observations made by Michelle Eaglin on information systems that currently without the extensive use of IT many businesses would not exist let alone survive. In this aspect, the EES integrates with the information systems to crate a secure, single repository for confidential HR processes and information and offers an easy-to use atmosphere that is accessible to the employees, regardless of the time and geographical location.The new ways help save time and money buy utilizing e-mail, online conferencing, smartphones, and tablet computers for the transactions.

Features often used

Through the EES capabilities,companies can streamline all the HR roles into four main categories: benefits, human resource, payrolls, and organizational administration. Various roles can be conducted within each category, manly “on demand” by employees using the ESS system.

Advantages

The main pros of companies implementing the employee self-service can be, categorized into three aspects: time and cost saving and revenue generating. In terms of saving costs, the main benefits are in reducing the costs for payroll and HR services to employees. In addition, since the employee capture all the information electronically and sent it to the relevant sources less time is spent processing the transactions and there is no rekeying of paper forms data.

The employees can also access the information at any time and from any location, whether remote, local or internationally. The employee information at the company database is more accurate since they can update at any time.

The move to electronically, pay statement is a prime example of hard savings where employees no longer receive paper direct deposit advice statements. Southern California Edison is an example of a company, where employees can print or view their pay statements through self-service as soon as they are posted. Such companies directly cut on costs and time but also avoid the long methods associated with posting costs and mailing time.

In revenue, generation companies mainly establish their employee self-service systems as gateway to other services and products. For example, place a link by signing with e-bay.com on their EES website, and when an employee purchases from the site, the company gets a small percentage of the price.

Disadvantages

One common disadvantage of relying on the EES systems is that it cannot process or transact large volumes of information or applications like the old tools managed. In addition, as stated by Mike Petersen’s article the main objective of EESsystems are prone to errors, with discrepancies ranging from wrongly put information to complete failure of systems. The e-services also leave out the clients not computer literate while diminishing personal communication that is essential in business transactions.