Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) provide a software solution to manage Human Resources services in a central location. These often cloud-based systems automate several HR functions, limiting the need for manual entry, and provide a single place for every user to find employment policies, handbooks, and forms.
If you’re not already utilizing one, an HRIS can be an important tool to help your organization manage its human resources procedures. As your company expands internationally, it is crucial to find customizable systems that will continue to work with your mission and values, and can grow with you. Learn how an HRIS can benefit your business.
1. Simplify Compliance Management
When you move into a new market, you also move into a new regulatory environment. It is important to understand how to enroll your employees in tax reporting systems, social security programs, and benefits administration programs, just to name a few. There are different reporting requirements in many areas with just as much complexity as your home market.
A good HRIS will already have the forms you need. Even better, they will be located in a central hub, whether on a website or your computer, so you can always access them without digging through file folders or worrying about where you placed different documents.
Once an employee has entered his or her information into the system, the HRIS will automate filling many of these forms and reports for you. In addition to promoting your HR staff with the correct forms, automated systems like this decrease the likelihood of human error, which can cause problems down the road.
2. Streamline Scheduling and Reminders
Efficiency is one of the best benefits of an HRIS. With an automated system, you have a more efficient, time-friendly way to manage your HR duties in a nearly-paperless manner.
HRIS systems allow you to give your HR department reminders at set points. This can be especially helpful when you are working with multiple deadlines across countries. Since individual countries place their payroll, taxation, and other tasks on different schedules, an automated system can remind you about a task before it’s due.
These systems can also remind you when your new country has a public holiday for which your employees are entitled paid time off. Every country has its own set of public holidays, many of which are mandated as days of rest for most workers. For example, American managers may easily remember Independence Day, but they might not remember that Australia celebrates Australia Day in January.
3. Unify Your Reporting
When you are working with a global staff in multiple countries, your reported data will come in several formats. You have to manage different currencies, different payroll and tax information, and other variations for each particular country.
A good HRIS system will unify the different formats of data into one centralized report or set of reports. If your data comes in multiple formats, multiple currencies, and with different recorded information, you won’t be able to use it effectively to analyze your business and plan for the future.
4. Accommodate Global Staff and Teams
One of the benefits of a cloud-based HRIS service is that employees can add and edit their own information through the system. While this saves time even for companies that are not international, it can be even better for companies with global staff.
In China, for example, every written employment contract needs to include identification numbers and a valid proof of identity. It could be a huge headache for a French HR manager to figure out what identification counts as proof of identity in China, and then ask the employee to send it. With a cloud-based system, the employee can be responsible to find the information that the HRIS system prompts him or her to enter.
HRIS systems help international businesses smooth the process of expansion by simplifying compliance through automation and providing forms and documents to your team. They unify global reporting to make business analysis easier and more productive, and streamline the information collection process by putting responsibility on the employee rather than the HR team to collect and input it.
Simplify Your Processes with a Global Expansion Partner
Managing compliance during a global expansion can get complicated quickly. Partnering with an expert in your new market can help you simplify HR tasks and responsibilities.
Our Global Work Platform enables you to hire and operate in more than 185 countries and can help you through your team’s international expansion challenges. Contact us today to learn more.
