HRMS made easy

The goal of an online HRMS (human resource management system) is to streamline HR processes such as recruitment, payroll, performance evaluations, and benefits administration and to provide a central repository of employee-related information. With such a system in place, employees and managers can easily access the HR information they need, and HR staff can be freed from burdensome paperwork.

Hosted HRMS solutions promise even more benefits, including faster implementation and lower TCO (total cost of ownership), because a hosted solution frees you from investing in hardware and from maintaining the solution in-house — key considerations in this era of lean IT budgets. 

We tested hosted offerings from both Employease and Peopleclick, each of which addresses a different set of HR processes.

Peopleclick focuses on workforce management, delivering strong recruitment and contract vendor management functionality through separate, highly specialized modules. Peopleclick should be considered by companies that make extensive use of contract labor or those that are willing to take an in-depth look at in-house skills in order to minimize outside recruitment costs.

Employease, on the other hand, is the better choice for companies seeking an all-around HRMS. Taking a holistic view of the HR department, Employease provides enterprises with a well-rounded, comprehensive collection of features, including benefits administration, insurance and COBRA management, payroll management, recruitment, performance evaluations, compensation analysis, and AA (affirmative action)-program monitoring, as well as a new leave management module.

Employease: One-stop HR shop

HR solutions have typically focused on HR department needs. To be truly effective, however, an HRMS must address the needs of employees, managers, and third-party benefits providers as well. Overall, Employease does this fairly well, connecting up all the links in real time.

Employees, managers, and HR staffers log in to eHR from the Employease homepage, which makes access a breeze. The initial corporate and employee setup is centralized from the eHR Employer Access homepage, and we found this to be a fairly straightforward input operation — up to a point. When it comes to some of the more esoteric tasks, such as managing employee benefits, pulling reports, interfacing with benefits providers, and invoicing, users may need training from Employease, which is typically included in the implementation fee. The eHR service is connected in real time to major third-party providers, including insurance carriers such as United Health Care and Aetna, as well as payroll services such as ADP and PayChex.

EmployeaseeHR streamlines HR processes for all members of the organization. It gives managers a means to view information on their direct reports, create and track performance reviews, change employees’ compensation or employment status, and handle recruiting efforts. Employees can view their current pay records and benefits packages and can incorporate life changes such as adding a new baby to their insurance plan. Links take employees to the employer directory and to postings from the HR department.

Employease’s new Leave Management module allows HR users to define leave policy rules for paid time off and personal time in addition to vacation, illness, jury duty, Family and Medical Leave Act, and disability leaves. The module also allows for accrual-based accounting rules in addition to other rules such as waiting periods and negative balances. It allows HR users to route requests and managers to check up on their team’s leave activity and to view balances. Employees can view time available, model the balance, request time off, and carry over unused time, among other functions. The addition of this module goes a long way toward freeing HR staff from the burden of answering common questions over the phone and puts the employee in the driver’s seat in planning for time off.

Peopleclick: Specialized workforce management

Peopleclick provides hosted services for recruitment management (clickXG-RMS), outsource vendor management (clickXG-VMS), and employee asset management through acquisition (clickEM). The result is a solid set of specialized workforce management services that could be improved in future upgrades by standardizing the user interface and workflow logic across the different modules. The company’s EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity)/AA-compliance solution for enterprises isclickAAP. Added as part of the company’s Criterion acquisition, clickAAP installs on-site but can be linked to clickXG-RMS. And wrapped around all of Peopleclick’s services is Knowledge Center, an analytics tool that integrates the data and can link you to third-party ERP products such as Peoplesoft or SAP so that you can perform detailed workforce analysis.

We found Peopleclick’s employee asset management module, clickEM, to be especially interesting because it helps companies pay closer attention to developing employees through performance, competency, and training management as well as success and career planning. It provides managers with integrated business intelligence about employees’ skills and accomplishments and threads together essential information that manages can report, chart, or graph. Of course, this requires a considerable level of commitment — and data entry — on the part of managers and employees but can help organizations take full advantage of employees already on staff and save money because it costs less to promote an employee than bring on a new hire.

Peopleclick’sclickXG-RMS and clickXG-VMS are mature, well-designed services geared to the recruitment and temporary staffing needs of large companies. clickXG-RMS handles permanent staffing tasks using customizable, role-based permissions for folks included in the hiring process, a job posting engine, and drag-and-drop functionality. In addition to posting job listings internally and submitting them to outsourcers, customers can also post them to Peopleclick’s public career site.

clickXG-VMS provides tools for managing the contract workforce. It handles requisitions and supplier distribution through a shared data platform, giving hiring managers the leeway to leverage their preferred supplier relationships, manage logistics and engagements, and perform time-tracking tasks that alleviate the headaches of dealing with time cards.

Depending on your company’s HR needs, both Employease and Peopleclick are worth a look. Employease provides the most comprehensive menu of services. Although Peopleclick lacks benefits administration, payroll processing, and other core HRMS functions, its clickEM, clickXG-RMS, and clickXG-VMS services provide outstanding workforce skill-set detail and a granular control over recruitment management that goes well beyond what Employease offers.