Snowdrop U-Access is a powerful online tool that can significantly reduce administration. Used in conjunction with Snowdrop's core HR and Payroll solutions, it opens up parts of, or all of the employee database to employees. For example, employees can log in securely from your intranet and view holiday entitlement, update address details, complete sickness documentation and book training on-line (depending on which Snowdrop modules are deployed). You may be familiar with the terms employee self-service or eHR, which define this type of tool. The extent to which you allow employees and line managers to view and edit live data is up to you. Each area of the solution, down to field level, can be categorised by you and grouped into user profiles. This makes it easy to allocate rules to large groups of employees at once and, if necessary, override this for certain individuals. Typically the HR team will allow line managers to view and edit their own team’s information. Employees themselves can view their own details with some editable fields such as home address, extension numbers etc. Used properly, U-Access is an excellent way to show your employees that you are happy to be open about the information you hold on them. This can be highly motivating, especially if you go as far as allowing employees to view their own appraisal and development plans and future training (functionality found in Fountain). U-Access customers have also found that this transparency of information is helpful in exposing absence offenders. A highly visible colour coded absence calendar drives home that absence is closely monitored and won’t go unnoticed. This has subsequently served to discourage ‘sickies’. By implementing U-Access, HR can reduce its own administration by up to 70%. Common requests for information, including holiday entitlement and appraisal notes, take a great deal of unnecessary time and effort as does chasing documentation to put back into the system. The time that is not spent upon these low value tasks can be re-invested back into areas that are arguably more important - recruiting, motivating and retaining your best employees. |