Vaccine requirements, remote work and reasonable accommodations weren’t everyday human resources focuses prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, with the changing HR landscape, organizations are facing unique challenges when it comes to legal restrictions and employment rules.
Whether you’re an outside labor lawyer, in-house legal counsel or HR specialist, the influx of HR cases over the past two years has not been typical—and it isn’t slowing down. While the challenges are similar for many professionals in the HR realm, the solutions are different.
Many forward-thinking organizations adopt case management software to better manage the influx of employee issues, streamline workflows for faster resolution and precisely document and track cases and complaints.
What is HR Case Management?
HR case management refers to the process of managing issues that pertain to the welfare of employees within an organization. There are a number of cases that the HR department and legal team are responsible for, including:
- Grievances
- Complaints
- Disputes
- Incidents
- Payroll issues
- Policy updates
- Employee on-boarding/off-boarding
- Terminations
Each case may involve a variety of manual tasks such as managing written requests, completing forms, sending follow-up emails and investigating issues. These tasks can become repetitive and tedious—creating a great need for automation to lighten the load.
Five Benefits of HR Case Management Software
The traditional way of managing HR internal processes through spreadsheets and paper files is becoming a thing of the past. Today, more businesses look to cloud-based HR technology tools like case management software to help manage their workloads. Here are five benefits you can expect from HR case management software:
- One place for all documentation.
When it comes to managing employee-related issues with ease, documentation is key. HR case management software provides a single location to store all your critical case data, emails, tasks and to-dos. That way, all the information you need is in one place to stay up-to-date and respond quickly.
Through integrations with Microsoft Outlook and other third party technology, all your critical business systems can work together to create a dashboard of organized case files. When a case manager needs to work on a complaint or dispute, they only need to log in to one software system to access everything and move forward with critical tasks.
- Enhanced communication across all parties.
Every employee complaint or dispute requires multiple parties to resolve it—and they all need regular updates to stay current with the case. HR case management software enables you to keep track of each party’s basic information (name, phone number, address, etc.), as well as their role within the case. You can set permissions for each user based on their role and the frequency with which they receive communication.
This ensures everyone has the most current information and can respond to the items they’re assigned to increase productivity across all areas. That way, other team members can pick up where you left off if a case needs to be transferred. All the information is ready for someone to learn the relationship and past dealings with the contact within minutes.
- Better case collaboration.
Your HR team is made up of a variety of users—both onsite and remote. You need a software system that can track each user’s activity and allow them to collaborate wherever they are. With the right software and security settings, you can set up access for reviewing other users’ calendars, to-dos/tasks, documents and other action items. HR case management software allows you to:
- Track and balance workload among HR staff and personnel.
- Identify and proactively address operational bottlenecks.
- Unify and track calendars among the HR staff.
- Provide easy, role-based mobile and/or remote access to internal and external users.
The best HR case management software gives you the option to set up notifications when a complaint or dispute has switched to a new status/phase so team members can stay informed throughout the entire process.
- Smarter decision-making.
HR issues are sometimes time-sensitive, so the faster they’re resolved, the better. HR case management software lets you pull up analytics on open cases and complaints within seconds and analyze action items at a glance. This increased visibility helps with assigning cases to the proper individual based on workload. It can also help you determine which cases are closest to resolution and report back to upper management.
With intuitive features that keep track of all employee issues, you can take a proactive approach to identify trends, which can help you manage cases and disputes before they even arise. HR case management makes it possible to achieve a 360-degree-view across all departments and geographic locations for ultimate intentionality.
- Save time through automation.
Stop wasting time on the same routine tasks when you could be executing larger strategy and achieving goals. Automation is a huge time saver when it’s built into HR case management software. For example, when an employee submits a complaint ticket or dispute request, your HR case management software should automatically create a case and follow up with a workflow based on the specific action taken.
These automation capabilities take the pressure off you to constantly complete forms, update spreadsheets and send emails. Instead, all of these steps can happen automatically. Plus, you can track every single case in progress across the entire department. With HR case management software, you can ensure your complaints, issues and disputes are moving one step closer to resolution—automatically.
HR Case Management Software Streamlines Employee Relations
You have a lot of work to do—from establishing strong employee relations and ensuring the work environment is safe to maintaining organizational compliance. HR case management tools make you more efficient in your job through intuitive technology that works the way you need it to. Legal case management software is the fully customizable solution every organization can use to manage their critical case and matter data (contacts, emails, cases, complaints, etc.) from a single platform.
It’s this tailored approach that sets Legal Files apart from other legal software providers. With a dedication to customer feedback and continuous improvement, Legal Files ensures your compliance case management software works the way you want it to—no matter your needs.
“Legal Files is a very flexible program. It was clear that Legal Files could quickly be customized to meet our specific needs for case management. Legal Files isn’t just for legal files, and we’re grateful it can be a solution for the work we do.”
Marcia Warden, Assistant Director, Employee Relations
Northern Arizona University, Human Resources Department, a Legal Files client
With more than 30 years of experience supporting organizations across a number of industries, Legal Files gives teams the customization and personalization they need to focus on accomplishing more activities each day with less resources and time.
Request a demo to learn more about how we help organizations like yours manage what matters most.