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Nonprofit organizations today are under increasing pressure to manage a wide variety of Human Resources (HR) tasks with little to no support. From designing new ways of working remotely to handling legal compliance issues - HR challenges have never been greater! 

Yet, most organizations don’t have an HR department or access to the information and resources they need to perform HR functions at their organizations.

If your nonprofit is understaffed or struggling to manage ever-expanding demands, HR technology can relieve a lot of the pressure - and even improve your organization’s overall operations. 

Here are 7 reasons why you should invest in HR technology for your nonprofit:   

1.  Access data securely from a single location

Nonprofits that don’t use HR software usually end up storing sensitive or confidential information in multiple unsecure locations. Data is saved on computer files or email accounts in a variety of formats and it often includes out-of-date or invalid information.

Storing employee records and financial documents in this way makes data difficult to retrieve and update, and puts critical information at the risk of being lost, stolen, or corrupted. 

Nonprofit HR software can solve this problem, as it gives you a secure central database to store employee documents. It also allows you to give staff access to the documents they need (and nothing else) - making sure confidential information stays that way!

2.  Give employees more control

Most HR software for nonprofits includes an employee self-service portal, which allows managers and employees to login to request time off, update personal information, and record performance reviews.

Managing all of this manually requires lots of back and forth communication with staff and multiple spreadsheets to track everything, which can often result in errors. 

Using a nonprofit HR software that gives employees control over minor administrative tasks not only decreases the possibility of errors but frees up time for staff who manage HR responsibilities.  

3.  Seamlessly manage employee sick and vacation leave 

 Besides giving employees more control, nonprofit HR software with automatic time off tracking saves time and reduces the possibility of errors. When recording sick and vacation leave manually, there may be errors or misses on your spreadsheets, and your HR team might have to keep track of long email chains. Seeking multiple approvals manually also takes more time and changes in remaining leave might not always be calculated accurately. 

HR software allows employees the ability to request time off right within the system, and managers the ability to quickly approve leave requests, which are automatically deducted from an employee's remaining time-off allowance. 

HR and other staff can then see all leave requests and approvals at a glance on a shared calendar, making it easy to plan events or meetings without having to follow up with team members individually. 

4.  Streamline employee and volunteer onboarding 

Onboarding is your first step towards a high employee retention rate, so you want to make sure everyone is excited to be part of your organization at the end of it! 

HR software can help streamline the onboarding process and ensure that it’s organized, answers employee questions and saves you time!

Small nonprofits often struggle with onboarding, especially when there are a large number of new staff or volunteers that arrive within a short period of time.  

With nonprofit HR software, you can create automatic onboarding checklists that ensure the right steps are taken to onboard each new employee and that the whole process is smooth. 

Learn more about how checklists can help you save time and streamline your onboarding process. 

5.  Gain greater visibility of your workforce’s performance

Nonprofits may need to report on organizational efficiencies and team performance to various stakeholders and while assessing team performance during annual reviews.

Smaller organizations without an effective HR solution often scramble to consolidate data from multiple sheets, spending days creating graphs and visualisations from scratch. 

With an HR software solution, all employee information is stored in a single system, making it easy to understand trends and visualise data using live dashboards and automated reports. 

HR software for nonprofits also include task management features where you can view your team’s current workload and project pipelines, manage timelines and deliverables, and schedule reminders for project updates. 

Having a clear picture of your workforce’s performance at the click of a button can help you submit accurate reports and make quicker, more informed decisions. 

6.  Simplify scheduling 

A big struggle for a lot of nonprofits is scheduling. Whether you have a large pool of volunteers to manage or staff that are constantly busy with multiple projects and commitments, finding time to schedule meetings or events can get very difficult. 

Organizers might have to check in multiple times with various staff, with dates and times constantly changing. Add volunteers into this mix and it can get really tough! 

With a nonprofit HR software solution, you can view everyone’s calendar at a glance, including time off, meetings and other important events, which makes scheduling super easy. Volunteers can also be notified through the HR platform, so everyone stays informed, with little extra effort on your part. 

7.  Increase the productivity and efficiency of your HR staff

Do you know how much time HR staff spend transferring data between systems? If you don’t have HR software, it’s probably a lot. 

HR tools not only reduce the need for manual data entry, but can help increase the overall productivity of your team by: 

• Making documents and policies easily accessible to all employees 
• Sending automated reminders for key events and milestones like performance evaluations and vacation time
• Integrating with your existing software to eliminate back and forth between different platforms and products 
• Improving task management by tracking deadlines and workflows

If you have a small team, this can really help increase bandwidth and free up, much-needed time!

Selecting the right Nonprofit HR software for your organization 

Nonprofit HR software can significantly improve your efficiency and make it much easier to manage administrative tasks. But with the large variety of software solutions currently available for nonprofits, it’s important to choose one that suits your needs. 

If you’re a small nonprofit with a one-member HR team, onboarding a highly complex software which requires hours of training and includes advanced features you don’t need will only make things more difficult, and may be abandoned eventually. 

So, before you select HR software for your nonprofit, ask yourself these questions: 

• Can we easily generate reports?
• Does it save us time?
• Does the system offer cloud-based technology?
• Does this reduce the need for manual data entry?
• Does the system require a lot of learning time for new hires?
• Does it include an employee self-serve portal? 
• Can more advanced features be added to the software later?
• Does it integrate with existing platforms? 

While opportunities to automate processes will always lower costs, consider choosing software that will also support your team to elevate work capabilities, help with employee engagement and unlock greater value.

For other nonprofit HR resources, visit HR Intervals.

 

Guest contributions represent the personal opinions and insights of the authors and may not reflect the views or opinions of Imagine Canada.

Partner HR by Silent Partner Software is people management software designed and priced specifically for nonprofits. Manage staff and volunteer profiles, documents, and time off all in one place.