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Feature Spotlight: Exporting from TimeKron into Payroll

TimeKron features a easy-to-use, yet robust exporting system. This allows you to export to most major payroll systems, including PayChex (new!),  QuickBooks, ADP, PeachTree, and CheckMark. You can also create your own export templates to be exported into your own payroll software. Submitted time, un-submitted time, and approved time can be exported into these different payroll programs.

Export Overview

Export Overview

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Export Template Guide

Export Template Guide

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To view all of our TimeKron Video Tutorials, click here.

As always take care,

DeShea

Software Techniques, Inc.
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

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Social Networking Sites – Your New HR Recruiting Tool?

From HRTechNews.com

It’s not quite widespread yet, but more companies are starting to use social networking Web pages to recruit employees.

Only 9% of HR pros frequently use those sites to recruit, according to a recent survey by the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM). That’s up from 2% in 2006.

Also, 56% said they never go to the sites. In 2006, more than three quarters of the respondents gave the same answer.

What are the benefits of Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin? The most common reasons people gave for using them were the abilities to:

• reach passive candidates (69%)
• target a specific level of experience (40%)
• find someone with specific skills (38%), and
• increase employer brand recognition (35%).

Motivations for staying away from social networking pages included lack of HR staff to try new recruiting methods (49%) and doubts about the truth of what users post about themselves (42%)..

As always take care,

DeShea

Software Techniques, Inc.
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Don’t be a stranger! Comment on this post or contact me!

Introducing: Customer Spotlight

At Software Techniques, customer satisfaction is our #1 priority. We strive to provide excellent service along side our superior products.

We are introducing a new section on our website and blog, “Customer Spotlight”, where we let our customers talk about their business and how their experience has been with our products. He have about 400 unique visitors daily to our website and blog, so this will give your company some exposure, while providing our company with satisfied clientele.

If you are one of our customers and are interested in this, here is some information.

• Your company name, logo, and information will stay on the front page of our website for one week, and on our blog forever.
• Every company that fills this out will be included in the “Customer Spotlight”. The following information is needed to be included in our “Customer Spotlight.”

Name (optional):

Company Name:

About your company (services you provide, how long you’ve been in business, etc):

Company URL (optional):

What program are you using? (SoftTime, TimeKron, HR):

What features do you use the most (leave request system, monthly calendar, etc.):

What do you like about the product:

We also would like your company logo to be posted on the front page of our website.  You can send it by email and it can be in any size or format. We will take care of the rest. Just make sure it’s big enough so visitors can see it.

Send your answers to the above questions to deshea@softwaretech.com. We will respond back to you once we receive your email with the date your information will be posted to our site/blog.

As always take care,

DeShea

Software Techniques, Inc.
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Don’t be a stranger! Comment on this post or contact me!

Feature Spotlight – HR’s Office Assistant

The HR Virtual Office Assistant keeps you organized by automatically notifying you of pending events such as employee certifications, training dates, evaluations, work permit expirations, benefit eligibility dates and benefit stop dates.

The HR Virtual Office Assistant will also notify you of missing records such as address information, dates, contact information, I-9 information, as well as a variety of user defined information.  The HR Virtual Office Assistant can be scheduled to run on regular intervals, on application start-up, or on-the-fly whenever you want.

It is just one of the invaluable organizational tools contained in the HR Diamond/SQL Edition solution.

Below is a tutorial of HR’s Office Assistant feature:

Software Techniques – HR’s Office Assistant

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As always take care,

DeShea

Software Techniques, Inc.
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Don’t be a stranger! Comment on this post or contact me!

Top 10 Tips to Hiring and Keeping Solid Employees

All of a company’s employees add value and contribute to its success – some in small way, others in large measure. Because sound recruitment and retention strategies provide a competitive edge, hiring should be done carefully, methodically and strategically. Here are ten ways to attract top prospects to your company and retain them once they’re on board.
1.     Recruit Continuously: Aggressive companies are always on the prowl for talent. They have a sense of what skills they need now and in the future, and what type of person will be a good fit. They look even when there are no current openings, because one can never predict when an employee might leave.

2.     Know What You Need:  Know the skills and personality traits that will make a person successful in a given job, so you can develop job descriptions when you’re hiring. This helps in framing interviews with potential applicants, who in turn learn in advance more about the skills needed for the position.

Initially, a job description facilitates the selection of the right employee. But a good job description also ensures that he or she has a clear understanding of responsibility, authority and expected results, so it also becomes a useful training outline.

3.     Interview Many Candidates: Don’t hire the first person you like. Commit to meeting a number of people – even though you won’t be interested in most of them. If you don’t think a person is a good fit for your company, use the interview to dig up information on your competitors or create a business-development opportunity. (Who knows where your company’s next alliance partner will come from?)

4.      Ask Probing Questions: The only way to find out if candidates will be a good fit for your company is to ask a lot of questions to discover whether:

* they possess a positive attitude.
* they have high energy.
* they are trustworthy and possess good character.
* they feel good about themselves and life.
* they take responsibility without making excuses.
* they desire to keep learning and hunger for growth.
* they are willing to follow the leader and work with the team.
* they have a good track record.
* they are able to flow with the organization and accept change.

5.      Check References: Today’s employment laws are extremely strict on how much information can be obtained regarding past employment; previous employers are not supposed to give out any information other than the length of employment. They cannot give out any information with regard to skills, attitude, attendance or anything else in the applicant’s job history while employed there.

6.     Clarify Expectations: New employees seldom know exactly what is expected of them, how they will be measured, or with whom they will work the most. It’s important to communicate expectations and metrics clearly and succinctly from Day One.

7.     Offer Attractive Compensation: Money buys the house and the bacon, but it also represents recognition and fairness. Talented people expect their contributions to be acknowledged and their compensation to reflect their impact. If necessary, do a competitive compensation survey.

8.     Establish a Buddy System: Often overlooked yet consistently successful, mentoring systems give employees a sense of history and community when they enter a new company environment. By introducing recruits to the office culture immediately, mentors make them feel important and necessary to the company’s success.

9.     Develop People to Their Full Potential: Every company leaves a tremendous amount of human potential untapped because its people are inadequately developed.

Provide informal feedback and coaching, cross training and opportunities for advancement. Train all new employees thoroughly in job requirements immediately upon hiring. Putting a new employee on the job to “sink or swim” results in frustration, sloppy work habits and omission of important details. Reinforce the attitudes and behavior patterns you want. A new employee is usually highly receptive to suggestions and eagerly assimilates and readily accepts the organizational vision, mission and goals.

10.     Conduct Exit Interviews: Retention of talent often begins at the end of the process. Chances are, an employee who is walking out the door will be more honest and forthcoming than a person who still depends on your company for a paycheck. But in order to ensure truly effective exit interviews, a leader must establish a climate of trust long before he receives the letter of resignation.

Written by Heather Brighton and Geri Stengel.

Ms. Brighton, president of The Brighton Group, is a management consultant providing strategic management, marketing management, consulting, and leadership training and development programs to individuals, business organizations and public/private institutions. Ms. Stengel, president of Stengel Solutions, is a business strategist who does business strategies for industry leaders and growth companies.

www.thebrightongroupinc.com
www.stengelsolutions.com

As always take care,

DeShea
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Bill Passes in Maryland – Maryland Flexible Leave Act

More and more bills are being passed mandating paid sick and family leave, which leaves many states considering the same outcome.

The Maryland Flexible Leave Act (MFLA) officially went into effect on October 1.

This bill doesn’t require companies to provide paid time off for illness, but if they already provide this, they now have to allow employees to use that time to care for an immediate family member’s illness.

This is different from the FMLA, since the illness doesn’t have to be serious.

This new law only applies to employers with 15 or more employees working in the state of Maryland. If you are one of these employers, you should review your policies and make sure your company allows Paid Time Off for the care of family members.

As always take care,

DeShea
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Top 3 HR Software Purchasing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Choosing the right HR product for your company can be difficult and often time consuming. While you’re searching for the right HR Software, try to avoid these three common mistakes when making that final purchase.

1. Ignoring the vendor’s history – Not knowing where your vendor is headed could be deadly to your business. We aren’t saying to dig into your vendor’s financial history, but anything such as how long the company has been in business, how many customers they have established, etc. would boost your confidence of the company’s longevity. This information should be available from any vendor.

2. Skipping a thorough demo - Before any decision is made, the software needs to be fully tested by anyone that will be using it – IT, management, HR, etc. If possible, just use a group of employees to test the demo as well, since they will be using it. This will give you key information on the user-friendliness of the product. Also make sure that the product achieves everything your company needs in a HR product. Most of the time, if the product doesn’t perform a task that you need, customization can be done in order to satisfy your company needs.

3. Not getting company references – Company references are the most important tool you can use when evaluating a product. Since most purchases come from word-of-mouth, why should your purchase be any different? Asking for contacts from your vendor is necessary, it provides an unbiased point-of-view that the Sales Department can’t give you. A good company won’t hesitate to give you references, if they trust and believe in their product.

As always take care,

DeShea

Software Techniques, Inc.
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Don’t be a stranger! Comment on this post or contact me!

Feature Spotlight – SoftTime’s Leave Request System.

Make your job easier while making your employees happy…

SoftTIME Diamond Edition:
AUTOMATED EMPLOYEE LEAVE REQUEST SYSTEM

Allows an employee to request time off through the software.  Employee’s can view their own time and totals, designate a day or days they would like to request off, and ultimately press SUBMIT, which then automatically sends an email to the supervisor (or supervisors) letting them know that there is a PENDING LEAVE REQUEST.  At that time the supervisor can then either APPROVE the request (it goes on record and sends an automated email back to the employee letting them know that they’ve been approved), or DENY the request (email sent to employee automatically), or send it back PENDING.

How to use if you are an employee:

Leave Request – Employee Use

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How to use if you are an administrator:

Leave Request – Admin

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As always take care,

DeShea

Software Techniques, Inc.
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Don’t be a stranger! Comment on this post or contact me!

Avoiding the high cost of employee absenteeism

Business analysts often hesitate to put a concrete valuation on service firms because, as they note, “their inventory walks out the door every night,” referring, of course, to the companies’ employees.

Problems of such mobile inventory begin when employees don’t walk back in the door the next morning due to absences for any number of reasons. This hazard of operation applies as well to manufacturers and companies engaged in retail or distribution, not to mention all the government organizations that serve the public — in short, every employer.

Work absences cost U.S. employers an estimated 17 percent of payroll costs — a huge penalty that can make the difference between profit and loss for private organizations, or massive budget overruns for public employers.

The reasons people are absent from work usually have something to do with health — their own or that of someone else in their families. People tend to use their allowable sick leave because they confuse it with vacation days and take the attitude of “use it or lose it.” And who can blame the working mom for staying home with her sick child, or taking time during the day to tend to an ill parent.

Other people are absent from work under programs ranging from the Family Medical Leave Act to long-term disability under workers’ compensation rules. Some are absent due to problems of mental health or substance abuse.

A survey of U.S. insurers and employers indicated that on any given day, 25 percent to 33 percent of the typical work force is not at work for a variety of reasons, including scheduled time off for vacations or paid holidays, incidental absences and employee disabilities due to both occupational and nonoccupational injuries, or illnesses ranging from the mild to serious.

It gets worse: The U.S. General Accounting Office reports that three out of 10 people eligible to return to work on a given day do not, largely due to a lack of disability management by employers. That could mean that employers could cut disability costs by as much as 30 percent if they managed employee health and absences more aggressively.

The management problem stems from a general lack of coordination among all the functions that deal with employee absences. Often, companies and public organizations view employee health and disability as uncontrollable costs. They pay for absences in a variety of ways such as direct payments to disabled employees, workers’ compensation insurance premiums, employee assistance programs, medical insurance, short and long-term disability plans and sick leave.

Often the uncounted costs are even greater. These include loss of productivity and erosion of customer services that can lead to loss of business and revenue.

Direct costs of employee absences are typically managed by various individuals and departments, without coordination or cross currents of information. For the same people with the same disorder, the management of absence and the payment to employees may be handled by the supervisor (sick leave), various people in the human resources department (FMLA or short-term versus long-term disability), the employee health center (work injury and modified duty), the risk management group and insurance administrator (work injury and workers’ compensation).

All these functions are managed without much direct knowledge of the individuals involved. Many organizations are unable to answer questions such as: Is an absent person getting the right treatment from the right provider, in a timely manner?

Would an absent person be able to return to work if duties were modified to accommodate recuperation? Is absence part of a pattern that could indicate a shortfall of responsibility by the employee?

These and other questions can only be answered if employers begin a focused absence management effort that would knock down the walls separating management functions and, more important, penetrate the barriers to open communications between employer and employee.

According to one survey, companies that applied integrated disability management strategies averaged 19 percent in savings. More than a third of the companies surveyed saved 25 percent or more.

The most successful absence management programs were those that applied safety education programs to prevent injuries, return-to-work management, medical care management, use of independent medical examinations and other services that can facilitate employees’ early return to work.

The concept of facilitation of care has emerged as a keystone approach to absence management. When employees have an advocate for their prompt and effective care, the costs of their treatment and absence from work are considerably less.

As always take care,

DeShea

Software Techniques, Inc.
deshea@softwaretech.com
http://www.softwaretech.com/

Don’t be a stranger! Comment on this post or contact me!