The Friday Tip

Management Reporting

18th April 2025

If comprehensive HR records are held within your People Inc. system, you can then give managers access to up-to-date reports aligned with their areas (and seniority). They then no longer have to request information (from the personnel team), they have access to a full overview of HR-related activities, on demand.

Current People Inc. reports have a colour-coded spine identifying the general topic/area (establishment, absence, staff development, etc.). Managers can also gain a guide on key metrics via the ESS statistics tool and the ESS Indicators feature.

Click here for more information.

Having an Overview

28th March 2025

If the majority of your employee-related records are held in your HR system, it is then much easier to get an overview of how good the information is (to find incomplete records or records that have expired). If information is hidden away in spreadsheets or filing cabinets, this is much more difficult.

Where are you with onboarding and compliance? (what do the records tell you?). How much absence are you experiencing, and is the affecting resourcing levels? (and do you have return-to-work records?). Do you have signed copies of the latest versions of employment contracts? (or HR Policy documents?). How up-to-date are staff development activities?

Click here for more information.

Benefit from great system tools

4th April 2025

When records are managed using People Inc. you benefit from some great system features. The more information you record, the greater the benefit.

Users can produce reports and graphs based on records held in the system, and can generate letters and e-mail that pick-up information from employee records automatically. It is also possible to get the system to generate reminders via e-mail (based on any dates you add). And there's much more.

These productivity tools work equally well with the information held in either standard system fields or in custom fields (fields added by the user).

Click here for more information on People Inc. system tools.

Granting Access to HR Records

28th March 2025

While HR users will usually have full access to the information held within People Inc., you can also make information available to other members of staff (people who need access to enable them to perform their role at work). This is achieved using custom access profiles.

Specialist staff in payroll, IT or other administrative roles might need access. For example, the individual who looks after the company vehicles.

Line-managers can be given controlled access to areas of the system - perhaps the training records for their team, or their employees' appraisals.

Click here for more information on custom access profiles.

Accommodating all of your HR records

21st March 2025

The screens supplied with People Inc. will cater for the needs of most organisations. But, if needed, the content and layout can be adapted to allow you to record further details. Additional boxes (fields) can be added to system screens; you can even add your own custom screens.

Information recorded in custom fields and screens can be used in letters and reports (and access-profiles). You can also get the system to generate reminders via e-mail (based on any custom dates you add).

If you have lists of employee-related information currently held in Excel spreadsheets, the data-import feature can be used to add the information into the system (even into custom screens/fields). Click for more.

Centralised HR Records

14th March 2025

You can use People Inc. to record and manage all of your employee records. Rather than have some records paper-based, some in Excel spreadsheets, and then folders of files on your server (records that are fragmented and difficult to keep track of), People Inc. provides a centralised, secure place to keep confidential employee information.

People Inc. accommodates both screen-based entries (absence records, NOK details, etc.), and attached documents (letters, forms, etc.)

In addition to the common historical records such as absence history, screens are also available to manage training records, equipment issued to staff, appraisals, benefits, general notes/actions, and much more. More.

Bulk Updates

7th March 2025

People Inc. includes a selection of Wizards that enable users to update records in bulk. These tools help to save time, and ensure updates are accurate (and entries are not missed). For example, users can:

• Set up next year’s holiday allowances for all members of staff
• Remove details of leavers (after 6 years have passed)
• Add copies of payslips (for this week or month) for all staff
• Add training needs for employees (for a new product or process)
• Add new salary figures for staff following the annual pay review

More information on bulk update wizards can be found here.

Data Management Tools

28th February 2025

People Inc. provides tools to update information at a data level. These tools allow users to select a range of data-records and update them globally.

• Users can change information based on a set of rules they have specified (e.g. change a department name right across the system).
• Users can recalculate a hundreds of records in one update (useful if they have changed settings in the system that are linked to staff records).
• Users can remove records in bulk, again, based on rules they have specified (this is a quick way to delete old or unwanted information).

More information on these features can be found here.

Monitoring Changes - Audit Trail

21st February 2025

There are some simple ways to find out who has added or changed records within the People Inc. system.

The system monitors updates made by users and records details against every entry. On each screen, it is possible to see which user added a record (and when) and which user last changed an entry (and when).

In addition to this, the Payroll Change log keeps a full history of all job, salary and employee record changes (including the user details and a date/time stamp). Notes are also added to this log automatically when an employee record is deleted from the system.

More information can be found here.

Deleting Records

7th February 2025

When an employee record is deleted, all historical records and file attachments are also deleted. This means that there is no need to tidy up historical records when you want to remove details of an employee.

To protect users, it is possible to block the Delete button on individual screens (for particular users). Records cannot then be deleted by mistake.

The system provides a tool to remove information relating to leavers and applicants (in line with GDPR). Users can select a date and remove any records that are older (e.g. all employees who left more than 6 years ago).

More information can be found here.

Attached Documents

31st January 2025

It is possible to attach electronic copies of documents and other files against individual People Inc. records. These can then be made available to line-managers and other users.

• Depending on the size of the individual files, you can attach an almost-unlimited number of MS Word documents.
• You can also attach scanned copies of letters and forms, but should keep an eye on the resolution of the scanner.
• You can store photographs against records, but once again, you need to think about the size of high-resolution images.

More information on attached documents can be found here.

Data Export

24th January 2025

Employee-related information often needs to be shared with other teams and other systems. For example, when an employee moves to a new home, both HR and the Payroll team need to be notified.

Payroll-related changes are automatically collated within People Inc. This makes it very easy to share the information with the payroll team. The information can be extracted (and saved as an Excel spreadsheet).

The data export feature can be used to share other data too. This includes expense claims, timesheets, training information, vehicle details, etc.

More information on data-export can be found here.

Recalculating Data

17th January 2025

Some of the information managed using People Inc, is re-calculated by the system overnight to keep it up-to-date. The system also checks key dates and expiry dates and send out notifications and reminders for these.

People Inc. automatically recalculates things like age and length-of-service for each employee. When you log in to the system, if time-dependent information seems to be out-of-date, the overnight recalculation feature may not be running correctly.

The overnight recalculation feature also updates the turnover statistics and makes sure current job and current salary details are shown correctly. More information on this feature can be found here.

Reconcile Holiday Allowances (and manage carry-over)

10th January 2025

People Inc. manages both holiday and other types of absence using annual allowances. To ensure absence figures are up-to-date, holiday allowances from previous years must be reconciled and closed.

To do this, you need to make sure all absence entries are recorded in the system and if your organisation uses the ESS, make sure all leave requests have been processed. When holiday allowance are closed the system locks the allowances and finalises carry over figures. More detail here.

If your system is set up to ignore unused leave (so unused leave is not carried over automatically), you still have the option to make manual adjustments to employee allowances if there are exceptions.