Three ways HRMS automation can help with compliance

HR data is subject to a myriad of laws and acts by a number of government bodies at a variety of levels from town up through to federal legislation. An HRMS with robust configuration is a powerful tool to help HR departments stay on top of an ever-evolving set of regulations. Here are examples of how HRMS automation can provide benefits to your company’s compliance efforts.

1. Integrations reduce risk

Every employer must verify the identity of each employee hired, along with work status. This is documented for the federal government via the paper I-9 form where the employee fills out half and the employer half. The employer is expected to decide if a document is genuine and then files the form along with document copies for the remainder of an employee’s tenure with the company.

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The federal government has opened the E-Verify program to allow companies to electronically send the employee and document details for instant verification. Innovative HRMS are providing functionality that an employee’s data is brought over from the HRMS into the I-9 and can be interfaced to the government who will validate the identification data against the source databases, saving HR the validation effort as well as guaranteeing its authenticity.

2. Automatically acting upon upcoming expiration dates

How many HR departments are currently running a report at the beginning of each month of things that they need to chase up such as a work permit about to expire or a license for someone driving a company insured vehicle? HRMS automation can help you to stay on top of these types of dates through configuring notifications and escalations. The employee may be sent an automated email reminder to bring in an updated document to HR. If there is no action it can then be escalated to a manager or HR representative to manually follow up. Automation ensures that dates are not missed or that events slip between the cracks.

3. Minimizing data complexity

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare has created a number of new reporting requirements for employers of 50+ employees who now need to provide annual reports with monthly breakdowns of who was offered health coverage along with employer/employee costs, details about the plans and employee data. This reporting becomes easier when you store and maintain these data elements in your HRMS and can reuse a report template to automatically generate the data needed by the government’s IRS Form 1095-C and Form 1094-C reporting.