Covid-19 has been ongoing for more than half a year and the third wave of outbreak in July has put the city under quarantine again. As a result, many companies have turned to Work From Home arrangements in a bid to minimize physical contact and interaction between employees. Although large corporations are seen to be implementing work from home or flexible work arrangements even before the pandemic started, traditional SMEs might not be familiar with remote working. The hasty adoption of this new work system may cause frustration in coordination and miscommunications within the company. An integrated cloud Human Resources (HR) management system would be a good tool to help manage your remote teams hassle-free!
Processing payroll and managing employee information on cloud
In the early days of distance working, without the help of a tap card system or a punch card machine made tracking the actual working hours a problem for HR managers and administrators. Without employee timesheets and managers having restricted access to the in-house (on-premise) payroll software, month end payroll will be affected by the inconvenience and lack of access to necessary payroll data.
An integrated cloud HR system thus provides the flexibility and ease of accessing data anywhere, anytime. Employee’s clocking, leave and salary information can be uploaded, stored and adjusted on JustLogin’s Payroll cloud portal. This is to ensure that payroll can be completed smoothly and timely even during remote work arrangement, avoiding delays or salary arrears due to operational constraints.
Leave management and work schedule at a glance
Some companies may utilise flexi-time (flexible working arrangements) by breaking employees into teams. Each team will take turn to work from home and go back to office in order to reduce the number of people working in the office at any one time. However, with this arrangement, manual tracking of staff movement and staff leave record may prove to be difficult in arranging manpower, especially industries that are more manpower-prone at physical locations.
Nevertheless, with the use of cloud HR management software such as Leave, colleagues working in the office as well as working from home, are able to view their leave and work schedule in real time. Employees and management can also apply leave, approve leave applications and view relevant data on mobile app or online platform.
Managing flexible working hours
The adoption of flexi-time means working hours are much more flexible than traditional rigid schedule. Employees may step aside from their jobs during normal hours to attend to family matters or their children, and thereafter make up the missing hours. The freedom derived from this arrangement undoubtedly brings convenience to employees’ lives, which may increase employees’ commitment to work and morale in return. Or, even improved work efficiency and performance. For the management however, the lack of transparency to staff’s actual working hours and locations pose concerns for their whereabouts and work progress. Companies can consider using a cloud platform in tandem with mobile applications such as Attendance. It allows employees to clock in and out on mobile phones anywhere and everywhere with GPS positioning and facial recognition capabilities to enhance the accuracy of the data. Human Resources colleagues are also able to track and check the status of employees in real time.
The epidemic undoubtedly poses a great challenge to business operations and business continuity. However, Hongkongers always rise to the challenge and have always been flexible and adaptive. By choosing the right tools and making the right adjustments, companies will be able to remain efficient and productive with the new mode of work while maintaining their staff’s sense of belonging to the company.
Information About Hong Kong Government Support During COVID-19
As a business owner based in HK, it is imperative that you know the financial assistance that are available to you in order to keep your business running during these uncertain times. For your convenience, we have compiled together a free e-book for you to download to find out more information about the various government support schemes that can benefit your business. You may download it here.
Alternatively, book a consultation with us for more info or if you have any inquiries on how JustLogin’s HR module can improve your HR processes.
About JustLogin
For happy HR, bosses and employees, you want a platform that can help your team remain productive and focused, while providing excellent employee experiences that impresses and retains talent. JustLogin is the HR employee experience platform that delivers both through a comprehensive suite of HR applications.