Managing HR in the Construction and Real Estate Industry

Human Resources departments in the construction and real estate industries face specific challenges. Whether it’s extreme diversity and mobility of the workforce, high turnover rates, or managing employees on multiple locations and projects, these complications place increased demands on HR personnel. Why not streamline HR tasks by using a comprehensive electronic human resources management system (HRMS) along with add-on modules designed specifically for your type of business?

Complete Employee Records

HR personnel know the difficulty of maintaining complete secure employee records in these businesses—for example, managing eligibility for time-off plans when many employees are part-time and others are seasonal. Sage HRMS, for example, keeps up with workers’ eligibility, no matter their schedules, and can send both employee contribution amounts and employer fringe amounts to payroll. It also handles the calculations for taxable fringe benefits using the IRS rate tables which are banded by the employees’ age and amount of coverage. Do you operate multiple companies? Having an HRMS system allows you to manage all of your employees in a single database while segmenting them by their specific companies. You can run reports on all employees or just employees for a single company.

And what about business property assigned to employees? Tracking vehicles, credit cards, and key cards is time-consuming. HRMS to the rescue.  It provides the ability to create new tables and screens in the system to track information that is important to you. No more spreadsheets!

Compliance

Simplifying HR tasks is what an HRMS does, and compliance is no exception. CRE companies, like all businesses, must maintain compliance with mandated government programs, but not all companies have your changeable workforce. Complying with the Affordable Care Act is easier when you use a program that tracks variable-time employees to monitor who is approaching full-time status and needs to be offered coverage. An HRMS generates compliance reporting on EEOC reports, Vets 100, and OSHA. It tracks OFCCP Disability status. With easily accessible reports, you’ll be ready for government deadlines.

Payroll

You deal with varying pay rates, certified payroll, and labor unions. With an HRMS, HR is the center point for storing all employee information. Having information maintained in a central database makes generating payroll more efficient. Companies can integrate employee information, tracking changes and sending them to the employee files in your Payroll system to update occupation and organizational changes as well as benefit related deductions and fringes. You can assign limits on interface change dates to choose when to update payroll. In self service, views of paystubs and direct deposits are also available to employees.

Copying information from one spreadsheet to another is tedious; it’s no one’s favorite task. An HRMS with paperless workflow and routing can eliminate manual and duplicate data entry of employee information. Not only does the electronic transfer of data save time, it also avoids errors common when manually moving information. Cross-reference tables map data so it’s recognized by both the HRMS system and the payroll processing system. Translation tables are available for organizational levels, company codes, deduction code, benefit codes, and more.

An integrated HRMS usually includes validation and auditing functions, guaranteeing the accuracy of information before it’s transferred. Exception reports identify problems, alerting HR personnel to address them before the payroll runs and checks are printed.

Reporting

Do you want to spend more time with people and less with paper? Manually creating reports requires a lot of time, and you have so much to do. Sage HRMS, for example, has around 100 standard reports which are easy to use. You can also write your own reports with either an Ad-hoc Query tool or Crystal Reports. 

Your HRMS Grows with Your Organization

A modular system of additional products allows you to add components to meet company needs as you grow, when you need them. Perhaps you have a new project or an expanding territory and need more employees. A recruiting module makes the hiring process more efficient and automates the onboarding process. You can deploy talent management tools or give your employees and managers more control over appropriate areas with self-service tools. Then, when benefits’ open enrollment dates come up, your employees can make their own selections.

Are you tired of sorting through paper forms stacked on desks or kept in file cabinets? Consider moving to a paperless HR department. When the time’s right, an HRMS add on can help you make the transformation. You can automate alerts and workflow information ensuring that people who need the information get it when they need it. This is particularly helpful for project managers and engineers who spend a lot of time out of the office but still need to know important information in a timely manner. The same is true for a manager who has agents in the field and needs to communicate with them issues in real time.

Helping HR Become More Strategic

If you’re still running your HR department with a small number of people manually tracking employee data, creating reports, and managing intra company communications, consider the benefits of adding a strong, integrated HRMS system. The change is good not only for the company’s bottom line, but also for the HR professionals who are free to contribute more of their time, energy, and expertise to other business concerns.