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Human capital management systems are created to help organizations with their HR needs. This article will explain what an HCM is, why companies are starting to use them and how to bring one into your organization.

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Managing Human Capital with Software

Human capital management or HCM is a software system that helps the process of managing human capital throughout your employees’ time at your company. It includes all the traditional human resources tasks and making them more efficient, improving productivity.

In other words, an HCM system can assist your company with hiring the right people, managing the workforce effectively and optimizing productivity.

Here are some of the activities a human capital management system might assist with.

  • Workforce planning: evaluating the company’s labour and skills needed in order to fulfill future staffing needs.
  • Compensation planning: providing competitive compensation to keep up with inflation and allow employees to live a quality life.
  • Recruiting and hiring: the process of finding, evaluating and selecting top candidates for open roles.
  • Onboarding: the process of bringing new employees into the workflow of the organization through orientation and training.
  • Training: providing employees with the opportunities and resources they need to improve their skills and capabilities.
  • Time and attendance: tracking working hours through a time card system in order to calculate payroll.
  • Payroll: is the process of calculating each employee’s pay, documenting financial transactions and keeping track of regulations regarding taxes.
  • Performance management: activities that ensure employees contribute to the organization through continuous feedback, goal setting and performance review

These activities are all a part of an HCM system which can help increase efficiency if you bring to your organization.

Benefits of human capital management

Human capital management is useful software for any organization. It can help meet the labour demands of your company and ensures that the best people are hired for the job, trained well, are able to grow within the company and encouraged to stay with you for the long haul.

The best part about having an HCM system is that once the processes are in place, you can manage an efficient and effective workforce.

Here are the benefits of human capital management.

Attract and retain talent

One of the benefits of using human capital management systems is increasing hiring speed and the likelihood of finding the right candidate. Through the different software programs, social media and employee referral programs, you are able to find and recruit the most talented candidates when looking to fill a position.

Once the talent has been acquired, HCM is able to help with employee retention. The improved efficiency in the workflow will help employees balance their time between life and work making them happier.  Happy employees tend to want to stay working for the same company.

Through the use of performance reviews, survey forms and other sources of feedback, human capital management systems can help employers identify what employees want. Knowing what your employees want means that you can give them things such as benefits that they will really use. This will increase their happiness and make them more likely to stay working for your company for years to come.

Identify talent gaps

Human capital management can help identify labour needs and talent gaps within your organization. For example, if your company needs employees with a particular set of skills, the HCM system can help you create a plan to find the right candidates for the job.

It will even help with calculating the cost of finding new talent so that you know for sure if you should be hiring someone new or retraining a current employee. Offering skill development opportunities can be a win-win for the company as the employee can learn new skills they need for the job and the company can save money on recruitment and hiring.

As stated above, growth opportunities within a company are also a great way of retaining good talent. This means that through managing human capital your company can fix talent gaps easily, while still maintaining employee retention rates.

By identifying gaps, the human capital management system is able to use a combination of people and business management to keep your business responding to change with agility. It will anticipate future needs in your workforce and can allow your company to adapt to any changes that might affect how you do business.

Boosts returns on investment (ROI)

It is important to consider ROI when hiring and compensating employees. You want to make sure that you are investing in people who will work hard for your company and continue to work with you in the future.

By investing in a human capital management system, you are also investing in your workforce. One way to do this is by providing growth opportunities for your employees. Employees like to feel as though they are able to grow within their job, meaning spending a bit of money on development programs can give you great returns in terms of happy employees.

Happy employees will not only continue to work with you as a company, but they also tend to be more efficient at their jobs. This means that you will be gaining increased productivity by providing programs that will help to keep your employees happy.

Data-driven decision making

When using an HCM system, you can get predictive analytics to help you make decisions about things such as compensation packages and work schedules.

Instead of having to think about these decisions for a long time, you can simply look at the data and go from there. This makes the process a lot easier and you will save time and money.

Now that we have looked at all the benefits of an HCM system, it is time to choose the right one for your company.

How to choose a human capital management system

Choosing the right HCM partner for your organization can seem daunting, but it can be achieved with a focused, organized and strategic process.

Make sure you know what your company requires when it comes to human resources. There might be certain processes that are not as needed as others, so check the different systems and what they offer.

Create a plan that will include what bringing an HCM system into your organization will look like. You need to know exactly what the scope of the project is, what resources you will need and what the budget would be. Also, make sure to align the project with a few team leaders who can sign on to help run the switch to the HCM.

Make sure you know who would be most affected by the HCM and keep them informed about the project. Try to get them on board with the possible change so that when you present it to your bosses, they can help your claim for improvement.

And last but not least, make sure you know how these types of changes happen in your organization and who would be making the final decision. Make sure these are the people you present your case for the use of an HCM system to and that you’ve done everything needed to make the change already. This will make the decision easier and the implementation of an HCM quick.

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Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.