Startups have a lot to worry about.
Finances, recruitment, growth, funding, sourcing – it goes on and on. You’re building your vision for the future, bringing your passion to life. The last thing on your mind is HR, right?
But your new employees are the backbone of your startup, and human resources is an essential tool for keeping employees happy, productive, and paid.
So how can you balance startup resources with robust employee management?
An HR help desk is a powerful and cost-effective support tool for vital HR processes like payroll, time off, and onboarding.
In this article, we’ll discuss what an HR help desk is and all the ways your startup can benefit from having one.
What is an HR help desk?
An HR help desk is a centralized hub of information that your employees can easily access when they need HR advice.
HR help desks come as SaaS, or software as a solution. They generally consist of a few core features:
- Knowledge base – a knowledge base is your encyclopedia of all things human resources. It answers common questions, such as how to fax from iPhone, and is searchable, categorized, and accessible for easy use.
- Integrations – HR help desks offer integrations with your existing business tech, such as HR management software (HRMS).
- Self-service portal – more advanced help desk software can facilitate self-service portals by integrating with HRMS, allowing employees even more access to information about payroll, time off, etc. Employees no longer have to wait for HR to answer a question about a certain benefit or pay period; the employee can find the answer for themselves.
- Ticketing system – HR help desks facilitate communication by prioritizing requests based on need and delivering them to the right team member. Ticketing systems also allow employees to track their requests to resolution.
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What processes does an HR help desk improve?
Before we get into the benefits, let’s take a closer look at the processes an HR help desk can help your startup streamline.
Onboarding
An HR help desk can streamline and speed up the employee onboarding process by providing new hires with a repository of information and a self-service portal for additional advice.
New employees have easy access to their onboarding material, such as company policy, employee benefits, payroll information, login credentials, and access controls. HR teams can also create and automatically deliver onboarding letters and videos to further streamline the process.
Offboarding
An HR help desk can automate offboarding processes like revoking access to systems and deleting login credentials. Offboarding processes like exit interviews and the collection of company assets can also be done remotely for convenience.
Payroll and benefits
According to surveys conducted by Software Advice, the most requested feature for HR software is help with payroll.
Payroll requests can take up a lot of HR’s time.
With an HR help desk, employees can find information about payroll and benefits through self-service portals or the internal knowledge base.
Time off
An HR help desk assists employees in organizing PTO, reporting sick days, and finding out how much time off they still have available.
9 benefits of having an HR help desk for your startup
Startups have a lot to do – and that’s putting it mildly. HR can feel like an afterthought for startups juggling a hundred other tasks.
Due to its automated nature, an HR help desk is perfectly designed for this scenario.
1. Streamlines workflow for both HR teams and employees
The main purpose of an HR help desk is to ease the burden on HR teams while still providing employees with advice, empathy, and information.
An HR help desk allows HR employees to automate administrative tasks, such as onboarding, offboarding, and organizing time off.
For employees, help desk software allows them to resolve issues themselves.
A searchable knowledge base offers advice and guidance. A self-service portal allows employees access to important information. And automated request tracking, prioritizing, and delivery streamlines workflow for HR teams when dealing with requests that can’t be solved by employees themselves.
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2. Facilitates employee access to information
Information empowers us. Access to information gives us the tools we need to do our jobs.
If an employee has a query, using a self-help portal or searching for answers in an HR help desk knowledge base offers them a quick answer.
Since HR reps are often busy, this helps employees gain faster access to important information without having to ask someone from the HR team.
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3. Improves employee engagement
As we mentioned above, information empowers us. When we have a problem, being able to resolve it ourselves makes us feel productive and accomplished.
And HR information is vital to empowering employees. Things like payroll, benefits, training, company policy, and performance reviews are personally and professionally important.
Not understanding or not being able to get answers to these core parts of our working lives can cause stress, frustration, and disengagement.
An HR help desk gives employees the means to help themselves, and if their issue goes beyond that, HR teams will have more time and resources to resolve things faster.
4. Enhances employee retention
Employee engagement goes a long way to improving retention.
According to research by Quantum Workplace, disengaged employees are much more likely to be searching and interviewing for new jobs and less likely to report their intention to stay at their current job.
Engaged employees have improved retention, even when they’re being actively recruited for other jobs.
5. It’s customizable and cost-effective
Startups often don’t have the resources to staff an entire HR team right out of the gate. But HR is still a vital part of running a business. This can create problems between management and staff.
HR help desks are a SaaS solution, meaning they’re developed, delivered, and managed by third-party providers for a subscription fee.
The software is often customizable for your unique needs and priced in tiers for every budget. Smaller startups might want to purchase the lowest tier and scale up as their business grows.
Help desk software is a cost-effective alternative to staffing a large HR team. The self-help nature of an HR help desk allows smaller HR teams to handle more employees without taking on higher workloads.
6. Integrates with other business systems
An HR help desk can integrate with your existing HR software, offering employees even more access to their information for faster resolutions of employee issues.
You can also integrate an HR help desk with your communication platforms, your VoIP call service, and your email. This offers an omnichannel solution to employee queries, where employees can make requests across different channels and still get a quick resolution.
7. Provides crucial analytics
HR help desks contain analytics for easy monitoring and access to valuable insights. This includes monitoring:
- Uptake of self-help services to assess and overcome reluctance to adoption
- Help desk software usage alongside employee engagement to assess the impact of your help desk on employee satisfaction
- Problem resolution and response times to assess how well your help desk streamlines HR workflow
- High-volume search queries to find the most pressing issues plaguing your employees and add additional pages to the knowledge base
- Feedback from employees and HR teams
Analytics let you see the value of your HR help desk. You can also find problem areas and work to improve them.
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8. Scales with the business
Since an HR help desk is SaaS, it can scale with your business.
As a startup, you might not need a huge amount of human resource management. You might enter the world of HR help desks at the bottom tier, paying a small monthly fee for a few features as you manage a small team.
But as you grow, you need your solutions to scale with you. With a SaaS HR help desk, you can purchase higher tiers for more features and more employees.
9. Offers access to advanced tools
Some HR help desks offer advanced technological tools like AI to streamline HR workflows further.
One example is an AI chatbot. An AI chatbot can address employees personally, answer more generalized questions, and link employees to the relevant knowledge base pages.
It offers a more personalized touch to an automated process, as well as being more functional than a simple search.
So… is an HR help desk essential for startups?
The cost-effective nature of an HR help desk coupled with its myriad of benefits makes it a resounding yes from us.
Startups often don’t have the resources to staff large HR teams and implement complex HR technology. An HR help desk offers the capabilities of a robust HR department at a fraction of the cost.
An HR help desk streamlines HR workflow, empowers employees, democratizes information, and automates tasks – all while saving you money. It’s a no-brainer; an HR help desk is an essential tool for building your startup.
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