As we close in on the middle of the first quarter, the holidays are but a distant memory and the struggles of year-end HR reporting are slowly fading. I am amazed at the number of people I have met over the course of 18 years in the human resource management industry that still do year end reporting manually.
HR Executives and their teams continue to punish themselves with a manual reporting process that is tedious, labor intensive and prone to data entry errors. And yet, it continues even in an era of affordable HR technology and automation.
What is the adage of doing the same thing twice and expecting different results? But there’s a better way.
The Time to Improve is Now
Now is the time to evaluate and review your HR reporting processes to prepare for 2020 and avoid the same broken, tedious process for another year.
The reason I suggest evaluating the process now is two-fold.
First, the pain of a manual year-end reporting process is fresh in your mind. Sit back and think about what you and your team could have been doing for the last six weeks if they didn’t have to manually populate reporting data.
The second reason to evaluate the process today is that acting now affords you the time to prepare, analyze and execute a new strategy. That’s far less likely to happen when year-end is looming just months or weeks away.
Developing a New Year-End Reporting Strategy
Your new year-end reporting strategy could be as simple or as advanced as you would like it to be. A simple strategy might be to create custom interfaces and templates that are home-grown to help you populate data more quickly and efficiently. A more advanced strategy would be to optimize the entire HR process using a software and technology solution that is fully automated and communicates electronically with filing and reporting.
See Also: What is a Human Resource Management System (HRMS)?
To begin, I suggest starting with internal meetings to see where the greatest impact in efficiency can be achieved. From there, consider working with an outside vendor or experienced HR consultant for assistance to see if they can offer advice on streamlining the process. For a more advanced and comprehensive approach, I suggest aligning with an independent solution provider that can assist with an unbiased recommendation. They will look at the big picture of your environment and be able to make objective observations on where you and your team can expedite the reporting process and create efficiencies.
Whatever path you choose, you will thank yourself in 2020!
Need Help Improving Your Reporting Process?
Then click below to get in touch with the HR & Payroll experts at Acente Solutions. One of our consultants will provide a free consultation to determine whether a new HR reporting strategy will save you time, money, and headaches before year-end rolls around again.
