Office 365 is a widely used suite of apps among HR managers. You surely have used their programs to create documents or spreadsheets. But besides the famous Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Microsoft also offers a cloud-based solution that can help create a shared workplace, easily manage documents and track employee engagement.
This tool is called Microsoft SharePoint, and it allows you to automate all of your business and HR processes without the need to switch between multiple programs all the time.
SharePoint Benefits for HR Management
Microsoft SharePoint is incredibly useful software for larger businesses where employees need to keep track of a huge number of tasks that are too many to handle manually. But if you're still not quite convinced about using SharePoint, let us bring out other advantages of this tool.
To start with, your SharePoint workspace gets updated immediately. The second you upload a document to SharePoint and allow access to your employees, they will be able to see it on their device. This is particularly convenient when you have very little time to get something done.
As an HR, you know how many files and documents you need to store and keep track of: resumes of your potential and current employees, applications you’ve gathered to build your talent pool, onboarding documents, contracts, and many others. With SharePoint, you don’t have to worry about having too many documents uploaded as it provides unlimited storage space. This software also allows you to categorize your paperwork and search through all of your files.
What’s also important is that you can see the different versions of a single file. The software saves previous versions of a document, allowing you to see what changes were made to it at any time. The latest version would show on top, and if you click on it, you’ll be able to access all the previous versions.
Microsoft SharePoint is a great tool to create a shared workspace for your entire staff. You can make announcements to your entire team or a particular group of employees. You are also able to create team sites, share lists and libraries, as well as evaluate employee performance with the help of this program. As we’ve mentioned before, these files can either be visible to everyone or to certain teams or employees. Once you allow access to a worker, they will receive an email letting them know that a task has been assigned to them.
In addition, you can use the shared calendar feature which allows your workforce to keep up with the company’s announcements, important meetings and events, as well as see who is currently on PTO so that they reach out to their deputies instead and not waste time awaiting a response from someone who’s on sick leave today.
Of course, not every employee should have access to all the files that are available to the HR team, so you can easily customize SharePoint settings according to your needs by making certain files invisible or forbidding access for some employees. Also, you can customize features of your Microsoft SharePoint workspace for workers according to their roles and job descriptions. That being said, it is possible to allow team leads to access their subordinates’ performance so that they can quickly evaluate their productivity.
Besides, you can choose whether to allow read-write or read-only access to your employees. This means that you shouldn’t worry about someone editing your file on purpose or by mistake – if a worker should only be able to read a certain document, you can assign read-only access to them, whereas if you are sending an employee a file to work on, they can easily edit it with read-write access.
It goes without saying that your files are protected and secured 24/7. HR managers deal with the personal and sensitive information of their employees, which is something that some workers might be worried about as to whether this information is fully protected or it may eventually leak.
Microsoft takes full responsibility for securing your and your staff’s personal data uploaded to SharePoint. In fact, you can set alerts for unauthorized as well as authorized access to your documents and set the privacy for your files based on your company’s privacy policy.
Since SharePoint is a Microsoft tool, it is very conveniently integrated with the rest of Microsoft Office apps. Whether you need to add the information to Word, Excel, or Outlook, it can easily be done without any issues.
You and your employees can access SharePoint from any device, wherever they are. The software is easily accessible on any gadget, whether it’s a PC, laptop, mobile phone, or tablet. This proved to be very handy during the Covid pandemic, when a lot of employers discovered the benefits of having their teams work online, without ever having to visit the office. Such ease of access makes it possible for employees to manage their processes from anywhere in the world, which has also brought many opportunities to people from remote parts of the world.
SharePoint is absolutely necessary and irreplaceable software for businesses, particularly big companies, where employees and especially HR managers have to deal with a lot of paperwork daily. Despite offering huge – in fact, unlimited – file storage, Microsoft SharePoint maintains your employees' privacy and keeps all the sensitive information 100% safe.
Overall, this tool makes the communication and collaboration between employees very easy and efficient, which results in the organization's expansion.
Lanteria is based on Office 365 and Microsoft SharePoint, so we know how beneficial using this platform is. We'll help you automate your HR processes as well as boost your employee engagement and provide organizational growth for your business. Reach out today to get started!
