**Employee Self-Service** is a self-service portal where every employee can solve everyday HR tasks on their own, without contacting specialists directly.
Service Catalog in SimpleOne HRMS
## What is Employee Self-Service (ESS)?
ESS is based on the **"one-stop-shop** " **principle** \- an employee logs into his/her personal account and gets access to a set of HR services that allow:
- issue a vacation or business trip;
- request a 2-NDFL certificate;
- update personal data
- check the work schedule;
- familiarize oneself with corporate news.
ESS portals are usually included or integrated into a company's general HR system to automate work on typical requests. For example, when requesting a certificate for a visa, the system automatically collects data on seniority and salary, forms a document according to a template and sends it to authorized persons for signature. The employee can track the status of the request in his/her personal cabinet and download the signed document.
## Main features of Employee Self-Service
Employee self-service portals work on the principle of maximum automation - minimum manual operations and live approvals. For example, when creating a vacation request, the system itself will check the balance of days, generate the document and send it through the approval route.
**Among the functionality of ESS portals:**
- An**employee's personal profile**, where the employee sees and manages all information about themselves, such as editing contact information, tracking career progression, and viewing payroll;
Employee profile in SimpleOne HRMS
- **absence management** \- a tool for planning and processing vacations, business trips, time off and sick leave;
- **ordering certificates and documents** without contacting HR or accounting department directly: 2-NDFL certificate, copy of labor book, visa certificates, etc;
- **training center** for professional skills development: online courses, knowledge base, registration for trainings;
- **corporate knowledge base**, which contains instructions and regulations, document templates, answers to frequent questions, and company news;
- **corporate calendar** for tracking meetings, events and vacations.
Vacation calendar in SimpleOne HRMS
## How Employee Self-Service works
The HR services catalog forms the basis of the ESS portal. In SimpleOne HRMS, the catalog is a structured set of services - from a simple reference request to complex processes of coordinating a transfer to another department.
**Let's consider a typical process of working with the system:**
- **Login and authorization **
An employee logs into his/her personal account via a browser or mobile application. The system automatically pulls up his/her profile with up-to-date data: position and division, contact information, immediate supervisor, vacation days remaining.
- **Creating a request **
When selecting a service from the catalog, the system offers to fill out a simple form. For example, for a vacation it is enough to specify the start and end dates, type of vacation, substitute employee.
- **Automatic routing **
After sending a request, the system checks the correctness of the entered data, generates the necessary documents, sends notifications to the participants of the process and starts the chain of approvals.
- **Status control **
An employee monitors the progress of his/her request in real time - he/she can see the current stage of processing, receive notifications about status changes by mail and can cancel or modify the request before the final approval.
Thanks to process automation, an employee can solve HR issues independently, without distracting specialists for routine operations. All necessary data, documents and statuses of requests are available in a single window of the personal cabinet.
## Stages of ESS implementation
Competent implementation of an employee self-service portal helps a company to digitize HR processes, free up time of HR specialists and increase satisfaction with the quality of HR services among employees. To create a self-service portal, you need to go through several steps:
1. **Preparation and audit of HR processes**
At the start of the project, the company determines the list of HR services to be digitized. The project team estimates the number of future users, analyzes the IT infrastructure and calculates the implementation timeframe. HR platforms, such as [SimpleOne HRMS](), shorten the preparatory stage thanks to a library of ready HR processes.
2. **Formation of service catalog**
The HR team describes each service, sets up approval routes and creates document templates. To speed up the process customization stage, you can use [low-code]() tools.
3. **Technical customization**
This stage includes platform installation, integration with existing HR systems and uploading directories. Specialists test the basic processes and eliminate any identified deficiencies.
4. **Pilot launch**
The ESS-portal can be piloted on a part of employees to collect feedback - whether the interface is user-friendly, whether there are questions or technical problems. Based on the results of the pilot, final adjustments are made before full deployment of the system.
5. **Scaling**
To make the transition to an employee self-service portal painless, it is important to train users. For this purpose, instructions are prepared, trainings are held and new departments are gradually connected.
6. **System development**
When employees start using the ESS, the HR team can gather user feedback to add new services and optimize existing processes. It is also necessary to constantly replenish the knowledge base so that each employee can get up-to-date information about the work.
## Benefits of Employee Self-Service implementation
Employee Self-Service changes the usual approach to HR processes in three ways: HR specialists are freed from routine operations and focus on staff development, employees get 24/7 access to HR services through a single portal, and department heads manage their teams using digital tools.
**Learn more about the benefits for each user group:**
For the company
For employees
For line managers
Time savings: HR professionals spend less time on routine operations and focus more on strategic tasks. Process automation reduces the time required to process typical requests from days to hours.
24/7 access to services:employees can apply for vacation, order a reference or update their personal information at any time via a browser or mobile app.
Convenient team management tools: ¨NBSP;SimpleOne HRMS automatically reminds you of upcoming vacations, helps you plan replacements and manage department schedules.
Less risk of error: digital format of work reduces the number of errors in documents - the system automatically checks the filled forms, substitutes the actual data and generates documents according to the specified templates.
Transparent processes: employees can see the status of their requests, know when they are due and can track where they are in the processing of documents.
Easy approval: the manager sees all necessary information in one window: current tasks, request history, comments of participants and approval deadlines.
Costsavings: HR operations costs are reduced due to the reduction of paperwork and time for processing requests. The company saves on printing and storage of documents, courier delivery and archiving.
You can quickly find an answer to a question: the knowledge base helps you find answers to typical questions on your own. Instead of calling the HR department, an employee studies instructions, regulations and answers to common questions in a single information space.
Informed management decisions: quick access to information about an employee's work schedule and career track helps to plan the team's work and reallocate human resources - for example, to appoint managers.
## Summary
The implementation of Employee Self-Service radically changes the work of the HR department. Instead of processing paper applications and approving documents manually, the system automatically checks data and generates documents based on templates. Employees get instant access to HR services through their personal cabinet, and the built-in knowledge base eliminates the need to contact the HR department with typical questions. At the same time, managers see a complete picture of HR processes in the team - from vacation schedules to personnel moves.
