As a HR practitioner, you know that having a never-ending list of things to do is part and parcel of the job. Chances are you’re at the front line of ensuring a host of essential people-related activities get completed on time. It can be exhausting for even the most experienced HR professionals.
Did you remember to make sure that the head of IT knows that Harry needs an email and PC set up for when he starts? Or the sales director needs to decide whether Frank fits the bill before his probation period expires? And what about Sarah’s visa? With everyone so busy, important emails are missed, scribbles on paper get lost in the desk clutter, and vital processes are forgotten about. Before you know it, Harry’s email-less, Frank isn’t going to stay but you still need to pay the full recruitment fees, and Sarah’s right to work has expired…
You’ve been there before, which is why you’ve probably got a comprehensive set of tasks lists for every occasion. The trouble is, how to you make sure everyone else is on track too!
That’s where Cezanne HR’s new Onboarding and Employee Lifecycle module can help. It allows you to set up as many different task lists as you like, each with their own activities, participants and due dates. Simply starting an event, like a new joiner, triggers the associated notifications, so everyone knows what they need to do without you having to do a thing! With everything managed centrally, you’ll have immediate visibility over the status of all the tasks, and participants benefit from automated reminders to complete tasks, meaning important actions are less likely to be forgotten about across the business.
We’ve identified together five essential task lists that Cezanne HR can help you automate.
1. Onboarding
Having an effective onboarding programme goes a long way in setting up your new employees, and therefore your business, for success.
But onboarding new hires comes with a heap of admin that HR have to keep on top of. By creating a new joiner task list, you can make sure that all important administrative and compliance processes get completed. This could include: letting your new joiner know what information you need from them before they start, such as references and right to work details; kicking off payroll processes, arranging health and safety training – and of course, ensuring that they have the equipment they need to do their job in place on their first day.
The importance of cultural onboarding should not be underestimated either, so why not include tasks to remind yourself to ensure a buddy is in place; and that their new line manager knows to show them round the office, or to schedule a welcome lunch for them in their first week. The new hire will feel looked after, and more at ease with your company.
2. Offboarding
The responsibility for managing leavers also often falls into HR’s lap. By automating task lists to remind colleagues to schedule exit interviews, shut down emails, delete logins, collect any devices (phones, tablets etc), calculate outstanding loans or holiday entitlements, confirm their last pay cheque, etc., you can ensure it is a smooth process for everyone involved.
As the custodian of your company’s brand, you’ll want your leaving employees to look back on their employment with your company fondly, especially as it’s so easy for past employees to leave negative reviews online following poor experiences with employers. The task list templates you set up in Cezanne HR can be easily tailored to reflect specific circumstances. For example, to remind a senior manager that it’s a long-standing employees’ last day, so they can stop by to say thanks.
3. Return to work
Automated task lists can come in handy when an employee comes back to work after an extended period of absence. Maybe they’ve just been out of the loop for a while, so scheduling a return to work meeting with their line manager, a refresh of health and safety or data protection training, plus perhaps a couple of check-in sessions with HR, can be an effective way to integrate them back into the company.
If a lot has changed while they’ve been away, or there are new factors to take into account, like a change in health status, check lists can be incredibly useful – even if only as a framework that you can tailor to individual employee needs.
For example, you could set-up a task list that‘s specifically focused on assessing – and adjusting – the work environment to accommodate disabled employees; like adapting desks, chairs or keyboards, moving the work station to a more accessible space, or installing a ramp if the employee is in a wheelchair. Or you may want to remind line managers to reallocate some of the employee’s workload to make their return easier, or to change their working hours to accommodate medical appointments.
4. Relocating over seas
Whether it’s from London to Birmingham, or from Birmingham to Tokyo, relocating an employee to another geographic location involves sound planning if it is all to run smoothly.
If just one critical task is forgotten about, the whole process can fall through, or be drastically slowed down, which can cause a huge headache for everyone. Sorting the employee’s accommodation, liaising with the overseas office, booking flights and arranging to move their possessions are just some of the actions that should be considered.
Many companies will use external help when moving employees overseas, but it’s still worth having your own task list – so you can double check that everything has been covered, and keep others up to speed too.
5. Working from home
More and more companies are recognising the benefits of remote working, on both a full and part time basis. While on the surface, the transition from office to home workers is straight-forward, you’ll know that there’s much more to it than meets the eye. Thankfully, automated checklists can help make this process more manageable.
Since as the employer, your obligations to your employees’ health and safety extends to their home working environment, this is often the first area to consider. Notifications can be triggered to make sure that Facilities or IT, for example, assess the home work environment to make sure it is suitable, and that home-workers have all the equipment necessary to do their job. This could include setting up laptops, phones or printers, and to determine their WIFI needs – and set up the appropriate services (they may require VPN access to ensure a secure connection, for example).
Obviously, it’s important not to forget about them just because they’re not in the office anymore. By including check-ins with HR or the line manager during the first few weeks or months , you can make sure that the transition is going smoothly, and identify any problems early on.
With Cezanne HR’s new integrated Onboarding and Lifecycle module, it’s easy to put together as many task lists as you like, and to tailor them to your specific company needs. It provides you with a systematic, standardised and automated approach to managing key activities and gives you a useful overview of the distribution and status of tasks, making that never ending to do list far more manageable as a result. Want to learn more about how it can help you and your business? Visit the product page here or book a demo.
