Managing the employee lifecycle is a complex business. There are processes to follow and forms to complete, documents to store and legalisation to comply with. It starts with the decision to recruit and onboard a new employee, throughout the duration of their employment and departure.
We are often asked if SharePoint can help manage the Documents, Forms and Workflows related to employees. In our experience, the answer is yes but it does depend on your specific requirements.
SharePoint is the content service within Office 365. Some common uses include:
- Employee facing sites for accessing policies, how to guides, links to resource and forms
- Manager toolboxes providing a one stop shop for everything managers need to know
- Onboarding sites for inducting new people into the organisation
- Secure sites for storing personnel files
- External collaboration sites for working with recruitment agencies
Forms and Workflows for managing the employee lifecycle can be implemented by combining Power Automate, PowerApps and SharePoint. SharePoint Lists can be used to track the various stages of the lifecycle and ensure documentation is captured and stored in the right place. These tools can help with processes including:
- Pre-employment processes for getting approval to recruit, advertising and interviewing
- Employment offer and acceptance processes
- Employee onboarding
- Review, professional development, and disciplinary processes
- Employee requests (g. leave, travel & asset requests) and employee benefit claims
- Cessation of employment
Creating an employee portal with SharePoint allows everyone to find what the need in one place.
There are many benefits that can be gained from incorporating employee processes into your digital workplace. Some of the commonly sighted benefits are:
Improved process compliance and visibility helps reduce potentially costly mistakes that occur when the process is not followed. You do not need to be a large organisation to have these process compliance issues, they can also be common in small organisations without a dedicated Human Resources team.
Better onboarding experience for new employees and contractors can reduce the workload for line managers, reduce the time taken for induction and ensure everything is ready for them on day one. Poor onboarding processes can leave a lasting impression for new recruits.
Increased productivity for the managers, employees, and the Human Resources team. Empowering people to self-serve and answer common questions makes it faster get a job done and reduces interruptions. Distributed workforces, multiple time zones, flexible working hours and working from home all suffer when information is not available electronically.
Managing paperwork over the employment lifecycle is important for compliance. Storing sensitive content means the storage location must be secure but also allow content to be easily located. One location for employment documents, correspondence, visas, qualification records, disciplinary letters, changes for employment conditions etc.
In addition to these benefits, your organisation may have some specific requirements. Seasonal workers, students, part-time and remote recruitment all have their challenges. Microsoft's collaboration tools allow people to access processes and resources from any location at any time. No clunky remote access solutions or needing to head into the office.
Microsoft provides a variety of tools for SharePoint Online including an Employee Onboarding Hub, Learning Pathways, document management, form, and workflow tools. These features are available in Office 365 Business or Enterprise subscriptions, with no addition licensing costs.
How can we help?
Our team has worked with organisations of all shapes and sizes to automate processes and build SharePoint based solutions for employee onboarding, managers and employee toolboxes, that empower the team, improve compliance, ensure sensitive content is easily managed and give a great first impression for new recruits.
To learn more, please contact our team of Microsoft 365 experts.