Despite the fact that 69.6% of employees in a recent survey said they still use manual, old fashioned methods of communication in order to request such things as time off, confidence and trust in the latest HR systems and the potential functionality they offer growing businesses is running at a high.
In a survey of 1000 adults in full time employment carried out by HR software solutions provider Cezanne HR, 74.1% said they would be “comfortable” or “very comfortable” with booked time off data being held by cloud-based systems. In fact, the data respondents were most concerned about their employer storing in the cloud were their bank details (25.7%) and their contact or personal information (18.9%). Only 7.2% of respondents said they wouldn’t want any information at all to be held in this manner.
Of those not already using an online HR system (82.1%), 70.4% anticipated that being able to access HR-related documentation online would save them time and trouble. Interestingly, however, 61.7% didn’t think remote, smart phone mobile access was useful or weren’t bothered either way.
“The entry level cost for these systems continues to drop making them increasingly affordable for smaller businesses and this is a really powerful argument that HR teams – especially, perhaps, in those SME environments – can use to make the business case or to prove the commercial value of investing in HR cloud-based systems to senior management,” explained Sue Lingard, a director at Cezanne HR. “Especially when you appreciate that a significant number of our survey respondents rated storing personal data in Excel spreadsheets (30.5%) or paper files (29%) as not at all secure, Lingard concluded.
Cezanne HR’s contention that SMEs will see a positive ROI on HR technology is supported by the latest 2016-17 HR Systems Survey from Sierra-Cedar, one of the largest US IT services companies. They reported that: “Organisations with high HR tech adoption in SMEs see greater revenue per employee, higher business outcomes and are 75% more likely to be viewed as a strategic business partner by their business leaders.”
Furthermore, and despite the fact that the demographic was almost equally split between the 18-34 and the 35+ age (and gender) groups, there were no really significant differences in attitudes or opinions between the younger or more mature respondents. For instance, the survey recorded whilst 40.7% of the younger group thought mobile access to HR data would be useful, the older group were only just behind on 36.3%.
With regard to what levels of trust survey respondents have in organisations to keep their personal information secure online, there is, perhaps, little surprise that social media companies such as Facebook were the least trusted by the greatest number (39.2%). On the other hand, employers can be a little reassured that, scoring 29.3%, they were beaten into second most trusted place behind “your bank” with 43.8%.
