52 FEATURES TO
LOOK FOR IN YOUR
NEXT HRMS
A comprehensive overview of core HRMS features to help you identify
requirements for your selection project
GUIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Core features including
recruitment and payroll
Emerging disciplines such as
analytics, social and mobile
50+ features covered across
learning, compliance and more
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INDEX
3
General HR
5
Time and attendance
6
Analytics
8
Recruitment
10
Onboarding
12
Social HR
13
Learning and development
15
Compliance
17
Payroll
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GENERAL HR
1. BENEFITS ADMINISTRATION
Managing employee benefits and ensuring that they are factored into your payroll calculations can
be a massive headache. The benefits administration module in your HRMS ensures that your HR
team can factor in medical insurance, pension plans, vacation, sick leave, maternity leave and any
other benefits offered to your staff quickly and accurately.
2. MOBILE COMPATIBILITY
Mobile access to your HRMS allows employees to keep in touch and access important information on
the move. Cloud-based systems can be accessed on any mobile device with an internet connection,
whilst both on-premise and cloud HRMS vendors increasingly offer native mobile apps for iOS and
Android devices. Some HRMS are now exclusively app-based, and are designed specifically for use
on a tablet or cellphone.
3. SELF SERVICE (EMPLOYEE)
This saves your HR department from many tedious hours of data input, and engages your employees
with your HRMS. Employee self-service allows your employees to input personal data themselves,
ensuring that it is up-to-date and accurate.
4. SELF SERVICE (MANAGER)
The manager self service functionality in your HRMS speeds up your HR processes by allowing
managers to carry out a number of tasks, such as entering data on performance reviews, approving
expenses claims and reviewing candidate applications. Managers can also access useful employee
information immediately, rather than having to go through HR.
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TIME AND ATTENDANCE
5. CLOCKING IN AND OUT
To start with the most obvious feature, the basic function of a time and attendance module is to
allow employees to clock in and out - i.e. keep a record of their hours. The punch clock might be a
manual piece of technology, or it might be linked to staff logging in to the office IT systems. Options
include magnetic card readers, PIN numbers or even biometric scanners that identify employees by
fingerprint or facial recognition.
6. EMPLOYEE SCHEDULING
These systems are about more than just monitoring the presence (or otherwise) of staff. Most time
and attendance modules or apps will allow you to create and manage schedules and rotas, and
such functionality usually comes equipped with alerts and notifications relating to overtime, poor
attendance, etc.
7. ABSENCE MANAGEMENT
As well as monitoring presence, such software can be expected to help you manage absence. Whether
its unexpected due to sickness, holidays or vacation days, or paid time off it should be easy for
managers to see at a glance whos in, who isnt, and what each persons remaining allowances are.
8. PAYROLL INTEGRATION
Assuming you manage your payroll using software, your time and attendance module should be
easily integrated with your payroll functionality; providing accurate attendance data for the payroll
cycle that can be used to rapidly and accurately calculate salary and other benefits.
9. COMPLIANCE
Whatever territory or country youre in, labor legislation and regulations probably lay down minimum
rest breaks and/or limits to the hours people can work in a shift. HRMS can monitor breaks on your
behalf, using that data for reporting and compliance purposes, and providing automatic notifications
if break patterns are not meeting the legislative norms.
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10. COST ESTIMATES
To get a little more advanced, some software offers an estimate feature, using historical data to
provide time estimates for defined projects, allowing better forecasting of the likely resources needed.
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ANALYTICS
11. CUSTOMIZABLE DASHBOARDS
As each department, and arguably each employee, will be looking to get something different from
your HRMS, it is important that the software allows users to customize it to their own needs. This
encompasses everything from allowing users to create their own dashboards to offering a selection
of color schemes, and will significantly increase employee engagement with your HRMS.
12. REAL-TIME REPORTING
Data (especially Big Data) is the new rock n roll and HRMS often provide tailored (ideally customizable)
reports and analytics using the systems data. Expect your management dashboard to include various
attendance-related reports, offering insights into hours worked, shift patterns, and so on with a view
to constantly improving productivity.
For some issues specially workforce management and ad hoc scheduling real-time information
and reporting is required, allowing timely decisions that can maintain customer service levels and
performance against KPIs.
13. PREDICTIVE CAPABILITIES
Its not enough to report on what was and what is, todays HRMS must offer a view of what will be,
offering a guide on future performance against metrics and KPIs and suggesting the factors which
may influence results either way.
14. AUTOMATED DATA-GATHERING
This should be a given, but your HR analytics package should be able to access whatever information
it needs, when it needs it in order to provide you with the insights you want. This includes access
beyond the HRMS database a CRM, ERP and other business intelligence software will contain data
which can be combined and cross-referenced with HR data to produce more sophisticated reporting.
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15. RECRUITMENT AND SUCCESSION PLANNING
Ideally, your HR analytics application will be able to reference business goals and KPI performance to
identify the roles and skills required by the business to meet its targets. This then informs recruitment
planning and activity, bringing HR and managers together for targeted hiring. Appropriate HR analytics
can ensure youre recruiting the right people, at the right time, and within budget.
16. ACCESS CONTROLS
Some data and reports may be public, some will most certainly not be. Your analytics app should
allow tiers and levels of access to what can be classified information. This approach to security
should protect against reports being shared with non-authorized users.
17. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
The reality is that cost is still a significant factor driving many business decisions. A good HR analytics
package is an opportunity for the HR function to demonstrate that it is sensitive to the harder-edged
business realities by linking reports and insights to workforce costings.
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RECRUITMENT
18. RECRUITMENT AND SALARY FORECASTING
Using your HRMS employee data, your HRMS can anticipate future retirements or promotions.
Through predictive analysis, it can anticipate where future holes may exist in the organization chart
long before the hiring manager puts in a request to hire.
Current employee salaries are a good data point when planning for a new hire. HRMS recruitment
modules can conduct data analysis on peer positions as well as the ones above and below your
requisition. This provides you with a sanity check for the future anticipated salary.
19. DATA PROFILING
How often have you heard a hiring manager say, We want another employee just like Joe! If you
analyze the data for Joe and your other top performers in your HRMS recruitment, you will be better
positioned to find that needle in the haystack. By reviewing the HRMS data of top performers, you
can start to find trends such as education level, area of study, years of experience, etc.
20. RECRUITMENT ANALYSIS
While recruiters know about sources such as the hiring fair at the local university or the tech job fair,
your HRMS data can help you to find other, lesser known hiring sources. In particular, if you analyze
the sources of hired candidates, i.e. employees, this will give you a better target than if you review
only the sources of candidates overall.
21. INTERNAL APPLICATIONS
A companys best candidate can be a current employee. The issue is that either the employee does
not know about the opening or the recruiter does not know that the employee exists. Are you making
it easy for current employees to register interest and find open positions? Solutions can range from
something as simple as forwarding a weekly email of open positions to something more complex
such as mining the database for employee talent. Either way, your HRMS recruitment module will be
the backbone of any such efforts.
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22. SOCIAL NETWORK INTEGRATION
Integration with social media - particularly LinkedIn, in this case - can make it easier for you to attract
top talent. Your HRMS can link up with an array of social media platforms, making job applications
quicker for the candidate, and speeding up the process at your end too.
23. APPLICANT TRACKING
Automatic applicant tracking is one of the best-established recruitment features and it continues to
be your biggest potential time saver. Knowing at the touch of a button (or click of a mouse) exactly
which candidates are at which stages of the hiring process can save hours of time and prevent a
great of frustration. Automatic push notifications, to-do prompts and process monitoring should be
expected standard features.
24. PARSING RESUMES
Even when you dont have a vacancy advertised, you may still be receiving resumes from hopeful
potential employees. Manual filing and management can turn this into a substantial job. However,
an HRMS recruitment module with the facility to automatically mine the resume for key information
such as name, address, contact details, even core skills, will give you a current database of candidate
profiles to invite once you do have a vacancy.
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ONBOARDING
25. PAPERLESS
Its almost certain that technology-driven onboarding is paperless, with access (especially by the new
hire) via a web browser. Not only is this a lower cost and much more environmentally-friendly, but its
also much more rapid and secure (compare email to the postal service).
Equally, whereas in the past, new staff might have to sit through an induction event and/or corporate
video in their first week, this same information can be sent to them in advance of first day, allowing
them to hit the ground running.
26. GAMIFICATION
An email with attachments to read and videos to watch may not always receive the close attention
youre hoping for. This is why some organizations are gamifying their onboarding, creating a much
more engaging and interactive process to obtain the necessary information, about the company and
its people which in turn leads to better retention of that same information.
27. AUTOMATED REMINDERS
When starting a new position, it is easy to become snowed under with basic admin and housekeeping
tasks. Some get deprioritized, and sometimes end up being forgotten entirely. Help your new hire to
find their feet by scheduling reminders to notify them of tasks they havent completed yet, and save
your HR department confusion over incomplete records down the line.
28. AUTOMATIC SCHEDULING
Most new hires have a number of people they need to meet in their first couple of weeks good
onboarding software will take care of this, synchronizing the calendars of all necessary personnel,
sending out meeting requests and monitoring responses.
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29. PROBATION MANAGEMENT
Its best practice, recruitment-wise, for new hires to have a probationary period the passing of which
depends on job performance, attendance and appropriate conduct. With a goal-setting function,
onboarding software can be used to agree key targets and measures for the first few months of
employment.
30. COMPLIANCE
Although the details vary from country to country, employing a new member of staff inevitably has
a compliance angle usually involving the collection and submission of tax data, the issue of an
employment contract, and so on. An automated onboarding system automatically creates a paper
trail (well, a paperless trail really) which can clearly demonstrate that the necessary documents and
data have been issued, collected and provided.
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SOCIAL HR
31. INSTANT MESSAGING
An instant messaging feature allows your employees to keep in touch without the hassle of email,
and without having to compile lengthy lists of phone numbers. Handy for keeping in touch with
remote workers, or those out on site-specific work.
32. GROUP COLLABORATION
Group messages and project message boards allow project team members to collaborate remotely,
and to exchange ideas on the go.
33. FILE UPLOAD
Allow employees to upload documents, powerpoints, pictures and audio files to your HRMS, where
their team members can collaborate on them remotely. This saves the time which would otherwise
have been spent emailing attachments round to large groups of people, and allows teams to focus
more on the task at hand. No more cumbersome group emails, and no more didnt get the email
excuses for missing deadlines.
34. SOCIAL NETWORK INTEGRATION
Via an onboarding portal and/or the corporate LinkedIn page, the new hire can be guided to connect
with new colleagues and key managers in advance of starting so that on Day One, they are seeing
names and faces that are at least semi-familiar. The same functionality can also be used to forge an
early connection with a company mentor.
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LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
35. CERTIFICATIONS ADMINISTRATION
Lets face it, the main pain of learning management is all that administrative work training nominations,
course management, updating materials, ensuring compliance where necessary (SCORM, AICC, etc.)
and thats before anybodys learned a thing! A learning management module should handle all this
and more, dealing automatically with enrollments, cancellations, notifications, engagement with
managers and instructors, plus a degree of evaluation reporting, showing the effectiveness of the
learning activity.
36. TRAINING DIRECTORY
Whether its a MOOC (massive open online course) or a bite-sized just-in-time individual download, the
full range of learning options on offer should be manageable from a single interface, giving employees
all the information they need to make the most appropriate choice. This includes mapping activities
against any competency framework you may have in place for individual performance management,
connecting the learning to the needs of specific skills and roles.
37. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Having the right skills and knowledge for the job is something any employee can take a personal
interest in. This means that learning and development is a key opportunity to boost employee
engagement and the user experience when accessing the LMS can be make or break. Easy access
to their own records, job needs, future aspirations and a range of options plus suggestions cross-
referenced to their personal development plan are the ingredients for heightened engagement.
38. PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATIONS
Certain roles require professional qualifications and/or continuing professional development. An
ideal LMS will identify such roles, send the appropriate reminders to prompt the necessary learning
activity, track the expiry/renewal of certificates and licences, and basically support those employees
in the maintenance of their professional status.
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39. EVALUATION DATA
Simple reporting functionality goes a long way in tracking the performance of your learning provision.
Auto-collation of evaluation data offers essential basic feedback on whether your learning options
and interventions are targeting the right skills, people, teams, etc. The right learning and development
module will link this to KPIs and team/departmental targets to track levels of ROI.
40. ACCESSIBILITY
A big issue with learning and development is the accessibility of the learning to all employees and the
accessibility to the software is no different. Wherever an employee is and whatever their role may be,
they should be able to access the LMS when they need it. Compatibility with assistive technologies
(screen readers, voice activation, etc.) goes a long way to ensuring universal access.
41. COMPANY POLICIES AND BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
You dont train employees for the sake of it. Ideally, the money you spend on certifications, training
programs and classes should be seen as an investment in meeting the companys strategic goals.
Have these easily accessible in your learning and development module so that employees can refer
back to them when they need to.
42. DATABASE OF EMPLOYEE CERTIFICATIONS
Nothing too fancy, but very useful to have. An employee certification database allows your HR
department to keep on top of who can use what, and who is qualified to do what job, and to take
action to renew any certifications about to expire. Useful for everything from sending your office first-
aiders on a six month refresher course to ensuring that no-one operates heavy machinery without
appropriate qualifications.
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COMPLIANCE
43. AUTOMATED RECRUITMENT COMPLIANCE
A major consideration during the hiring process is avoiding discriminatory practices that might leave
the business open to a claim. Job advertisements, interviewer questions, reference checks, and so
on are all open to risk of prejudice on grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, marital or family status,
physical or mental disability, gender, age and possibly sexual orientation. HR compliance features
built into the software can at least ensure that all communications (invitations to interview, offer
letters, etc.) are solid.
44. AUTOMATED EEOC COMPLIANCE
The USs Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is charged with guarding against the
abovementioned discriminatory practices. Common recruitment practice is to ask successful job
candidates to fill out an EEO self-identification questionnaire. Again, the right software will come
with fully compliant questionnaires and also ensure that the resulting information is used in the
appropriate manner, including reporting on the diversity of the workforce.
45. AUTOMATED ONBOARDING COMPLIANCE
Software-driven onboarding of new hires leaves an electronic trail, showing exactly what has been
sent and received (and signed and returned) and when. This makes it a simple matter to prove
HR compliance for documents such as I-9, W-4, and state withholding forms, OSHA rights & safety
training, any confidentiality agreements, key staff policies and the employee handbook.
46. AUTOMATED HEALTHCARE BENEFITS COMPLIANCE
Healthcare-related compliance in the US takes in a number of pieces of federal legislation. In particular
the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but
also potentially the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the Mental Health Parity Provisions,
the Newborns and Mothers Health Protection Act, and the Womens Health and Cancer Rights Act.
Put simply, the simplest solution is to have HR software that takes care of the data collection and IRS
reporting automatically, and is kept up to date with any changes to the law.
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47. PAID TIME OFF (PTO) AND FMLA
The Family and Medical Leave Act entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid,
job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons with continuation of group health
insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave.
[Quoted from the Department of Labor website.
If that sounds complicated, factor in that any unused paid time off can be used concurrently with the
FMLA leave and theres a certain comfort to leaving the recordkeeping in the cyber-hands of some
trusted software that keeps count of the days and prompts managers to ask or answer the right
questions at the right time.
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PAYROLL
48. FLEXIBLE PAYROLL PERIODS
Some employees are paid every week. Others are paid fortnightly. Others are paid once per month.
Often, organizations will pay different types of employee over different time periods, so having a
payroll system that can cope with different payroll periods will cut down the time it takes to process
employees pay and reduce data input error.
49. BULK PROCESSING AND UNPROCESSING
Simply put, these features allow HR teams to automate payment of multiple employee wages per
period. The unprocessing feature allow these to be undone if anyone identifies a mistake that needs
to be corrected.
50. ONLINE PAYSLIPS
Use your HRMS to make your employees lives easier by making their recent payslips available to
view and download any time. Why not save a few trees whilst youre at it and move to a completely
paperless payroll system?
51. PAY ADJUSTMENTS AND OVERTIME
This allows accounting, payroll or HR staff to amend employees pay to factor in bonuses, reductions,
pension contribution salary sacrifice, unpaid leave or any other number of adjustments.
52. GLOBAL PAYROLL COMPLIANCE
Payroll compliance varies from country to country, and from state to state. This means that if you
have multiple offices managing compliance adherence can get confusing. Luckily, your HRMS can
automate your payroll to comply with regulations depending on geographical location.
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This guide was written by Dave Foxall, HRMS World Columnist, with contributions
from Kathryn Beeson, HRMS World Editor
For more exclusive HRMS advice and resources follow HRMS World on social media
This guide was brought to you by [Link]
Icons made by Freepik, [Link] licensed by CC BY 3.0
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