Human Resources (HR) professionals, along with managers and employees, will get great satisfaction—and a major productivity boost—from a new application, Net.Employees™.

Net.Employees lets workers and their supervisors view and update information directly from their PCs in a confidential section of their Enlighten.Net intranet. Net.Employees:

• Frees the HR staff from routine inquiries
• Makes it easier to keep employee information accurate and up to date
• Adds powerful new functionality to HR information management, including the processing of payroll and time-and-attendance data
• Considerably reduces paper handling and consumption

A great HR tool gets even better
Since Enlighten.Net's initial release in 1999, most users have dedicated at least some portion of their intranets to human resources. Managers at these companies no longer spend inordinate amounts of time answering employees' HR questions. Instead, they've placed a wealth of information on the intranet, where employees can easily find their own answers. The types of material most frequently published on an intranet include:

• Policies
• Internal job postings
• Training schedules and materials
• Announcements
• Forms of all kinds
• Links to benefits-related Web sites

Now, with Net.Employees, workers can also view their work schedules and contact records, as well as checking their attendance and accrued time off. If authorized by management, they can also "punch in and out" on virtual time cards, update their own contact information, and submit online requests for time off or new responsibilities.

This "self-service" aspect improves the accuracy and timeliness of employee information, since employees don't have to wait for someone else to enter a change. Importantly, their information remains confidential; the only other people who can access it are managers and HR personnel.

As empowering as Net.Employees can be for workers, the application will delight managers and HR professionals even more, by automating the most time-consuming payroll and personnel processes: entering, changing, tracking, and reporting employee information; calculating hours worked and applying appropriate pay policies; and scheduling staff.

Tracking and reporting made easy
Standard information tracked for employees comprises their personal data (including dependents and emergency contacts), training, pay, and benefits. Also tracked are personnel reviews, incidents, and any company property in the employee's possession, such as a cell phone, car, or laptop computer. Managers can view this information by employee, globally, or by department.

They can also generate over 20 reports: everything from EEOC reports to workers' absences and salary histories.

Once the HR department uses Net.Employees' administrative tools to set up users and security, pay periods and groups, department structure, policies, and defaults, managers can perform all their payroll-oriented processing online—right down to signing off on employee time cards, schedules, and exceptions. Payroll time records can then be exported to ADP, QuickBooks Pro, Paychex, or any of a number of other popular payroll programs.

HR departments will probably always be a locus for administrative details. Armed with Net.Employees on an Enlighten.Net intranet, however, managers and HR professionals can spend more of their energy on critical business issues—and the human side of human resources—and less on mountains of paperwork.