Gear up your HR processes with SharePoint

HR management doesn’t usually cause much trouble at small companies with only minor HR processes in place. But as the organizational scale grows, HR needs grow accordingly. As a result, an HR manager gets covered in tons of papers as the volume of interviews, meetings and candidates’ applications becomes completely uncontrollable. This is a great danger for an HR manager’s work processes: with just one task overdue, others will be postponed too.

To save your HR department from such a situation and to raise HR productivity in your company, SharePoint is the tool to adopt. Actually, the list of HR activities is very large (documents, competences, trainings, vacation, sick leaves management, etc.) and all of them can be automated by SharePoint developers.

Delegating recruitment to SharePoint

Recruitment is among the most time-consuming, long-running and document-abundant HR processes. An HR site on SharePoint is what can save much time and effort here, turning HR challenges into HR benefits.

SharePoint assistance starts with defining what a recruitment workflow is. All the recruitment steps (opening and approving a vacancy, searching for a candidate, creating a workplace, onboarding, etc.) can be included in the workflow depending on the HR department needs and recruitment scope.

At the same time, SharePoint workflows don’t stay rigid, they grow and change progressively with HR department development. Even if SharePoint workflows start to drop behind the current HR processes, they can be extended to cover new functionality and to fit the HR demands.    

HR’s benefit: Adjusted HR workflows allow an HR manager to view the full picture of recruitment and control its progress. An HR director will be able to evaluate HR managers’ performance and detect problems.

Interviewing with SharePoint

An integral part of the recruitment process, interviewing can also be assisted with HR software. There is a plenty of off-the-shelf interview management systems on the IT market. But do you really want an independent system for each of your processes?

With SharePoint, an HR director can choose a suitable working scheme within the single system that manages all the HR processes. Interviewing can represent either a separate SharePoint workflow integrated with other recruitment processes, or a part of the existing recruitment workflow. In both cases, interviews won’t drop out of the recruitment chain but will guide an HR manager throughout the hiring process.

Speaking about interviews, time management is not to be left aside. Recruiters are welcome to manage their schedules (appoint meetings and interviews) in SharePoint that can be synchronized with the external Outlook calendar. Thus, users will be automatically notified on every upcoming event either via SharePoint or email.    

HR’s benefit: Extending an interview workflow on their SharePoint site, HR managers will be able to follow up the entire hiring cycle within the single system.

Brushing up a recruitment database

When HR processes accelerate, the volume of documents grows enormously.  SharePoint is a handy tool to put your daily document routine in order so that no candidate’s profile, completed test tasks or job offers get lost in emails. By storing all HR data in the centralized SharePoint database, an HR manager has 24/7 access to recruitment information. A recruiter won’t have to spend hours looking for an old document either, as it can be found in 5 seconds via the search panel.

When needed, an HR site on SharePoint can be reinforced with reporting capabilities. Reporting will allow an HR director to control current workflows, evaluate HR managers’ effectiveness by their results, monitor the HR department activities by time periods and much more. A user is free to choose how and what information (e.g. vacancies open for more than 30 days, candidates accepted but not employed yet, hired candidates, etc.) to include into a recruitment report.

HR’s benefit: SharePoint allows an HR manager to arrange and store HR data that can be always turned into an up-to-date report.

Speeding up collaboration

SharePoint capabilities for collaboration are useful to make HR coworking easier and faster. As a collaboration platform, SharePoint is nice both for one-to-one and team work.

An HR manager can share candidates’ CVs with colleagues, discuss vacancies, send interview results through the SharePoint Newsfeed and create HR communities to discuss the current HR issues. All HR data stored in SharePoint can be viewed and edited by any member of the HR department whenever employees need it.

Moreover, a recruiter using SharePoint will never feel isolated from the HR department as the platform allows users to follow their company’s activity outside of the working place (at home, on holidays or on the go), owing to the Office 365 capabilities.

HR’s benefit: SharePoint facilitates HR collaboration and keep HR managers constantly tuned into HR processes.

Implementing SharePoint for HR

Although SharePoint is regarded as off-the-shelf, it does require qualified consultants to be installed. Our 6+ year SharePoint expertise shows that a SharePoint site development from scratch is the best option.

First of all, HR managers are free to define the HR processes to be automated. Thus, employees choose the exact functionality they will use.

Secondly, by the end of implementation they will get a flexible HR tool that can be transformed on the go (e.g. a system administrator can change views, fields and elements in SharePoint lists and libraries where HR files are stored).

Thirdly, SharePoint implementation can be completed in a short timeframe. In our practice, we spend 2-4 weeks for a medium-size SharePoint project (even with no technical task or requirements provided).

Getting more benefits

The above-mentioned HR benefits serve as the foundation for even bigger advantages:

• Customized according to specific requirements, SharePoint not only cuts the amount of manual work but saves an HR manager’s time by reducing the hiring lifecycle.
• SharePoint is one of the solutions with double benefits:  it is implemented in a short timeframe and provides a rich palette of tools in a single solution.
• SharePoint has a highly flexible functionality. You decide how you want your HR system to look like.

Conclusion

The choice of a solution that fits your HR department well can’t be made in a single day. Before you come to a decision, all the HR needs and all the capabilities of HR software should be considered. SharePoint is one of the solutions that can be optimal for your HR processes automation, as it stays flexible and is able to grow proportionally to your HR department development.

Please contact our SharePoint consultants to learn more about the platform and its capabilities. 

by Sergei Golubenko via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community