If you’re a nonprofit poised for growth, identifying and implementing more HR technology can save you time, reduce errors and reduce manual tasks.
HR manages recruiting personnel, screening, hiring and onboarding for every new employee to your organization. Oftentimes, in nonprofits you also have freelance project employees that come under grant monies for a short period of time as well.
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Being able to make strategic decisions in regard to long-term growth includes planning for your human resources technology to grow with you. That means identifying how you’re using HR technology currently, and then planning for how you will use it in the next twelve to eighteen months.
These are basic questions to help you identify current benefits of your HR technology:
- Is your current technology system supporting all your HR-related needs?
- Does your system require significant time to learn for new HR employees?
- Are you using spreadsheets to manage most of your financial reporting?
- Does your current technology system offer a cloud-based technology?
- How do we benefit from the technology we are currently using?
- Does it save us time?
- Does it reduce the need for manual inputting of data?
- Can we easily pull reporting for the executive team, donors, grantors and audits?
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These questions are good ones to review with your HR staff to get a better understanding of how your current technology supports you and whether or not it can grow with you long-term.
No matter what HR technology system you currently have, there are six ways nonprofits can utilize human resources technology for years.
Reduce manual workload
Is your staff spending a large amount of time offline, gathering numbers and compiling spreadsheets in order to track your payroll or produce reporting for grantors or audits? Using integrated human resource software enables you to reduce this time significantly because you are able to easily import and export data for reporting, and for producing tax and GASB-compliant data as well.
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Prevent manual errors
When managing full-time employees and contract or short-term employees, manual errors can happen in onboarding, payroll, benefits and compensation. Using a robust HR solution reduces manual errors because much of the calculations are done automatically within the system.
Better reporting, audit trail and compliance with grants in regard to payroll gives nonprofits an advantage in their competitive market.
Track your budget in real-time
For many nonprofits, payroll is one of the largest expenditures in a budget and in any given year, nonprofits see a flux. Being able to pull your budget numbers and see a real-time view is key to anticipating your nonprofit’s abilities for expansion in personnel. Budget tracking also affects grantor requests as well as compliance and audit needs. If you’re doing most of the managing of your budget manually, it might be time to explore human resources technology that helps you reduce those manual tasks. For example, does your current technology ensure you don’t have duplicate employees on record?
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Provide important data for grantors’ reporting
Applying for grants requires payroll reporting that easily shows your current personnel, as well as the opportunities an additional grant can give you in regard to hiring new staff for a larger mission effort within your current budget year. Ensuring you’re able to easily pull and track your employees’ compensation helps you identify for grantors specifically why you would benefit from a grant that helps fund employee salaries within your nonprofit.
Reduce audit errors
Automating much of the data inputting can reduce your yearly audit errors. In payroll, errors can often be found in making duplicate employee record entries, complex wage calculations or filing W-2 tax forms for IRS requirements. Using technology that catches your payroll budget variances or duplicate employee records helps prevent fraud, as well as ensure cleaner audits long-term.
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Improve employee access to benefits, payroll and information
Your employees are key to expanding your nonprofit’s mission. To attract and retain top talent, your HR technology can and should enrich the employee experience. By having 24/7 availability to benefits, compensation and W2 information, you can provide employees easier, more secure access and efficiency value in being able to see their information at the time and place they need it.
Using technology that helps you work smarter, not harder will also give your nonprofit the ability to expand and grow its mission, staff and services within your community.
