Managers: Reduce Paperwork To Spend More Time with Employees
(Editor’s note: Today’s post is brought to you by our friends at Paycom, a leading provider of cloud-based human capital management software. Paycom continues to be an industry leader with its Direct Data Exchange, the first tool to track employee usage and engagement ROI. Oh, and congrats to them for joining the S&P 500 earlier this year! Enjoy the article.)
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about the importance of organizations giving employees answers to their questions in a timely fashion. With everything going on right now, keeping employees informed is so incredibly important and Paycom’s Ask HereTM allows employees to ask common workplace questions – at their convenience – and get speedy answers.
The goal of Ask Here is to improve the employee experience by giving employees the answers they need so they can focus on their work. Ask Here makes the employee’s life easier because they don’t have to directly go to HR, their manager, or a subject matter expert (SME) in the organization for everyday information. It also reduces HR and the manager’s workload, because they can answer a question once for everyone and use those answers to craft key messaging for the company – all from within the app they use for all of their HR and payroll functions.
However, Paycom realized that answering questions wasn’t enough. To complete the HR digital transformation, there needs to be a way to reduce paperwork administration. That’s why Paycom introduced a complimentary tool within the Paycom app called Manager on-the-GoTM.
Managers Need Anytime, Anywhere Access
One of the features that makes Manager on-the-Go unique is the ability for managers to complete review, approve, and respond to many of the most common paperwork requests that they receive from throughout the organization. Through Manager on-the-Go, managers and supervisors are able to view and approve – at any time and from anywhere – several different types of employee information and activities including:
- Timecards, scheduling, and time-off requests: I must say that I believe electronic scheduling should be the norm by now. Sadly, I’m not sure that it is. With Manager on-the-Go, managers can approve employee timecards, time-off requests, shift swaps, as well as uncomplicated leaves of absence.
- Pay increases: Many organizations give employees pay increases on a pre-set schedule like at the end of their introductory period or once they complete a certain training module. Even though pay increases are automatic, the manager needs to officially approve them. These automatic increases aren’t held up administratively when using Manager on-the-Go.
- Expenses: For managers who are responsible for approving employee expenses, this can be a helpful feature. Let’s say an employee is traveling at a conference or hosting a client for lunch, employees are able to submit those expenses immediately for approval. No waiting until there are a bunch of receipts to submit. Managers can approve right away and it’s added to the next check run.
- Employee Analytics: To help facilitate decision making, Manager-on-the-Go gives managers the same data points that they’ve come to expect from their desktop version of Paycom. Managers are able to review time and labor data, display it in a graph format, and export it for future use.
My big takeaway from Paycom’s Manager-on-the-Go product is that managers get to spend time with employees versus employee paperwork. But because the paperwork is still important, they’re able to handle it using their mobile devices versus sitting behind their desk. Manager-on-the-Go allows managers to go one place to get stuff done. And the one place is something they have with them all the time – their phone.
There’s one other thing that Manager-on-the-Go does that I’m very excited about. Read on…
Give Managers the Ability to Communicate via Video
In addition to the approval center, Manager on-the-Go also has a video feature where managers can upload short videos. This is perfect for microlearning sessions. I recently ran across a statistic from the Journal of Applied Psychology that said learning in bite-sized pieces makes the transfer of learning 17% more efficient.
And while I don’t want to focus this video feature exclusively on COVID-19 and having a large remote workforce, organizations might want to consider video if they’re planning to continue remote work for a while. In fact, I could see some organizations giving employees greater flexibility in remote work moving forward, so this video feature would help improve communications not only with remote and field personnel, but across the workforce. Managers could upload video announcements to share with the entire team (versus calling a meeting).
Reducing Managerial Burdens Sets Managers Up for Success
Speaking of improved communications, I believe that’s really the No. 1 benefit of Manager on-the-Go. Employee information keeps moving in the system versus sitting on someone’s desk. Employees are happy because their requests are being expedited through payroll. HR is happy because we don’t have to chase managers for paperwork. Finally, the manager is happy because they get to spend their time on things that matter. Which we all know is not paperwork.
And, it’s true that spending less time on paperwork benefits the organization’s bottom-line. According to Ernst & Young, the average cost of a single entry of data is $4.51. It’s doesn’t take very much math to realize that using technology to reduce paperwork is a good return on investment. If you want to learn more about how Paycom can help your organization reduce paperwork, check out this case study about how their HR technology “quenched” a beverage company’s thirst for paperless processes.
I’m not saying that paperwork isn’t important. We need paperwork for compliance and back-up. But a manager’s job isn’t all paperwork and we need to make sure that they’re not bogged down with it. Organizations want managers to spend more time building good work relationships with employees because the employee experience is important.
In the process of thinking about the employee experience, let’s not forget about the manager experience. We rely on managers to deliver a great employee experience. So, we should give them the tools they need to get the job done.
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