Employee Portal: 6 Ways To Ensure Yours Is A Success

Employee portals offer a range of tools for employee self-service. They are a flexible and cost-effective solution and are increasingly becoming central to business operations. With their streamlined, automated processes, employee portals will eliminate unnecessary paperwork and email trails within the office. Additionally, they will empower employees by giving them more control and autonomy over their working lives as they can source information for themselves and complete work tasks. In this article, we identify six ways to make sure that your employee portal is a success.

1. Make Your Employee Portal Personalized

The popularity of Facebook and Twitter as communication media is largely down to the personalized menus and content they present to the user. All of us – and that includes your employees – have become accustomed to receiving information that is targeted to our previous viewing history and our individual needs. Offering a personalized menu on the employee portal will immediately engage your workers. News and updates that are specific to the staff member’s team and job role as well as frequently used tools and apps will make it a truly personal experience for that employee. What’s more, staff members will be able to customize the portal by embedding their favorite Google apps such as Google Calendar, Google Docs or Google Sheets. Alternatively for quick and easy access, using an iframe or widget they can embed frequently visited websites; for example, the NASDAQ index or the weather channel – whatever may be appropriate.

2. Make It Employee Self-Service

Enabling your worker to complete requests for annual leave, payroll, expenses and training opportunities as well as staff appraisal documentation will have a number of benefits. The first is that it empowers staff. Giving them greater autonomy and control over their working lives will result in happier, more engaged employees and a better team morale. In addition, it will result in cost savings for your business. Staff will no longer need to request help from the HR department or accounting team and the portal will ensure that the requests and notifications are sent electronically directly to the appropriate staff member for action.

These benefits don’t just relate to internal business processes either. In fact, all your paper-based systems are capable of being automated on the employee portal. Using the portal’s easy-to-use custom form builder, it’s a straightforward process to automate all the company’s workflow processes. These could include customer orders, requests to suppliers, weekly sales reports, purchase orders and much more.

3. Make Your Employee Portal Mobile Friendly

Increasingly employees are working flexible hours and remotely away from the standard office environment. Working from 9-5 in the main office is fast becoming the exception rather than the norm. This trend is being driven by improved technology and by an increased desire for a better work-life balance. In fact, employers that have encouraged remote, flexible working have found that on-costs and overheads are reduced whilst staff engagement and wellbeing is enhanced. It therefore makes sense for more employers to encourage remote working; however, staff members will still need to be able to access all the information they need to get the job done. With cloud-based technology, using the employee portal your staff members can efficiently and effectively complete their work tasks regardless of the time or their physical location.

Having a mobile friendly employee portal that is optimized for the smaller screens on tablets and smartphones will give your workers even more control and autonomy. It will also save your organization money and will mean that staff can remain productive even when they’re on the road drumming up new business.

4. Make It Interactive

It’s important to include an interactive element within the portal that appeals to our essentially social nature. Giving staff members the opportunity to connect, collaborate and communicate with colleagues pays dividends in ensuring your portal is a success. In-built social features such as collaborative work spaces, blogs and forums, as well as user profiles and biographies means there are ample opportunities for staff to interact with each other and collaborate on different projects.

What’s more, the employee portal allows for two-way communication with senior management and executives. The ability for staff members to comment on news items for example, or to join a discussion on the vice president’s blog sends an important message to staff that their opinions and views matter and are being actively listened to by managers. Staff views on topics – whether it’s the company’s new logo or ideas for a team lunch – can also be sought using interactive quizzes and surveys on the portal.

5. Make It Engaging

Content that is interesting and useful is essential. Don’t make the mistake of simply uploading every product manual and brochure, or every company policy and procedure. Write the content to fit the medium so make it short and concise and use accessible language. Be imaginative. Is there another way you can get the message across rather than always using the written word? What about a how-to video, a webinar or an infographic? Mixing the content up and presenting it in a variety of ways will help to ensure that employees remain engaged and enthused about the portal.

6. Make It Part Of The Everyday Work Routine

The one sure-fire way to ensure your employee portal an instant success is to make it an integral part of the everyday work routine. The employee portal should be the one central platform for all the tools that your business typically uses:

• project management
• file and document storage
• knowledge management
• corporate calendars
• staff directories.

The more staff use the portal, the more they will become familiar with its capabilities and the more indispensable it will be to their daily work.

Make A Difference With Your Employee Portal

Introducing an employee portal will quite simply make a difference to your organization. It’s a cost-effective solution, meaning the return on investment in terms of reduced expenditure and increased productivity will be significant.

With so many potential benefits on offer, you will want to make sure that your employee portal is an unreserved success. Use these five tips to guarantee that your business is reaping the rewards of an employee portal from the get-go.

Do you want to have a more productive and engaged workforce? Do you have an abundance of paperwork in your office or is email overload an issue?  Then have you considered introducing an employee portal? If you’re interested in finding out more about employee portals or would like to have a free test drive then get in touch with the team at HyHub today.