“Safe, Secure, and one of the best Microsoft Products ever!”

– Reviewed by Muneeba F., Head of Operations

---------------------

If you’re a subscriber of Office 365, then you’d be familiar with Microsoft SharePoint. If you’re familiar with it and using it for your business processes, then that is great; if not, then you should start using it.

Why?

Because it is, without a doubt, one of the best collaboration tools available in the market.

If you are already using SharePoint, then here’s a video guide for you where you can learn 10 easy improvements for your SharePoint Forms.

Microsoft SharePoint is a cloud-based solution that can help you create a digital workplace where all your data is easily accessible to you from any of your devices. The HR department most commonly uses SharePoint because of its capabilities for document management and employee engagement. SharePoint allows the HR department to bring automation to their business processes and create team sites according to their needs. If you’re still on edge about using SharePoint as a human resources management solution, then well make that decision more comfortable for you as we're going to provide you with six reasons why SharePoint is the best HR software.

Best Collaboration Tool

Collaboration and communication are vital factors for a business’s growth. When companies expand, the partnership becomes more critical, and to do that, companies need an efficient collaboration tool instead of a simple shared server. Microsoft SharePoint has been around for almost two decades now, and over the years, they have perfected the management solution to a degree where no other software comes close to it.

Collaboration is an essential aspect of the HR departments’ duties; they have to announce policy changes, conduct training tests, evaluate employee performance, etc. Microsoft SharePoint allows the HR team to create team sites/collaboration sites, lists, library, create a document workspace, document versioning, etc. through which they can bring efficiency to the business processes mentioned earlier. The HR team can customize the visibility of these team sites, they can share it with everyone, or they can share it with a particular department or group of employees. When the HR department creates and assigns a task to an employee, SharePoint automatically sends an email to them. The HR department can also create a shared calendar, an issue tracker, dashboards, automated workflows.

SharePoint allows the HR team to manage the on-boarding/off-boarding process more effectively; they can assign tasks to the involved departments. When they assign the tasks, the platform automatically sends an email to all the concerned departments, to which those departments can provide confirmation for, this makes it easier for the HR to keep up with all the necessary processes.

Document Management

Handling employee documents is another vital part of HR’s job description, whether its managing resumes, contracts, appraisal, statuary, onboarding procedure documents, etc. Managing and searching through vast amounts of paperwork can become a problem for the HR department and will cause inefficiency. The cloud-based HRMS SharePoint is unmatched in its document management capabilities; unlimited storage is provided to the users so they can store all the documents they get. The HR team can create custom fields to search the document through meta-data that’s built-in with word files; this makes it easier to search for a single document among hundreds. The HR team can customize the metadata fields according to the type (healthcare, general, employee benefits, etc.), editor (name of the employee), etc. SharePoint also provides document versioning, which means that multiple versions of a single file are stacked on top of each other, you’d see the most recent one on the top, and when you click on the file, you can access the previous versions as well. The HR team can also manage the access of these files and versions of data they can provide read-only access or read-write access to the employee. For example, they can assign read-write access to HR members for the employee handbook and assign read-only access to the employees.

Compatibility with Office 365

A great HRMS doesn't only work efficiently on its own, but it can integrate with other software that the company uses. Microsoft SharePoint is easy to integrate with other applications of Office 365, which allows SharePoint to add the information to Outlook, Word, and other Office 365 apps automatically. 

Customization

As mentioned earlier, in SharePoint, the HR team can customize the settings for the shared documents according to the employees’ needs. This allows them to deliver relevant content to the employees according to their roles. Furthermore, HR can customize the features of SharePoint for employees according to their job descriptions. For instance, they can allow the managers to access employee evaluation of their department and restrict access for the employees, or the HR can enable managers to evaluate the employees on their own.

Privacy and Security

HR handles a lot of sensitive and personal information of the employees; keeping that information is the HR’s responsibility. The cloud-based SharePoint platform is highly secured, so the HR team can store their files without having to worry about unauthorized access to the information. SharePoint and its HR portals allow you to set-up alerts for both authorized and unauthorized access to the data.

The HR department can also set the privacy of the documents according to their company policy; they can create a group and allow them to be able to view the files or assign visibility according to the employee's position.

Ease of Access

Another feature of SharePoint that makes it stand out is its easy access; The HR team and the employees can access their files freely on any device. They don’t require a fully-loaded PC; they can access the data from their mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc. This feature allows employees and management to work from any location they want. Real-time access allows the employees to get access to their files as soon as they get uploaded on the platform; this feature is invaluable, especially when you are in a hurry.