RSS FeedsKerio Workspace for Human Resources Management
Small businesses may not have a fancy Human Resources software package or even a dedicated Human Resources manager, but that doesn't mean that they don't have need to manage reviews, salaries, vacations and other employee related information. Kerio® Workspace is ideal for that task and as the data storage requirements for this are very small, it can be handled by the free "Starter Edition" quite easily.
I don't have any employees now, though there was a time when I did. Thinking back to that time, I laid out an imaginary Human Resources tool in Kerio Workspace.
If you are not familiar with Workspace terminology, see some of the other "Workspace" articles here. Basically, think of a "Space" as a folder and a Page as a file within that folder (although a Page can contain files, text, images and other things, so it's more than just a "file").
A few things to note here: the Space "Human Resources" is readable by everyone. I created a Space for every employee within Human Resources, removed the "Everyone" permissions and added the specific employee with Read permission for their own Space.
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This set up prevents employees from seeing anything about any other employee at all - but the Admin can, of course, see everyone.
Most pages created under their individual Space simply inherit "Read" permissions from the Space. A few, such as the "Goals" and "Emergency Contacts", can be updated by the employee.
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Here is Fred updating his contacts for his upcoming vacation:
Other pages are created and maintained by the Admin - most of these would be readable by the employee, but even that permission could be removed for specific pages. You also might want to temporarily remove read permission while in the process of updating a page.
As explained in other Workspace articles here, a page can contain images (employee photos, for example) and documents such as spreadsheets as well as the examples I have shown in this mock-up.
An employee can leave comments on any page that they have Read permissions for. Here Fred lets me know that he is working on the Tasks I assigned during his last review. I see those comments in my Newsfeed and can mark the task completed once I have received the reports..
This same basic idea can be used for outside sales contractors (resellers, commissioned agents and so on) when part of the agreement includes meeting performance goals or there are complicated records to be kept with regard to certifications, territories and so on.
I'm sure that you can think of other things you might add to this Workspace. In a company with managers who are responsible for employees, you might create new Spaces under a manager like Fred and give Fred "Admin" rights to those Spaces and Pages. You might include PDF's of W2 forms for employee access and might also include benefit information, company policies and information for new employees that would be readable by everyone. This is a great place to organize Human Resources information and data.
Remember, the Starter Edition is completely free and is only limited by disk space - 10 GB if registered, 5 GB otherwise. An application like this is unlikely to exceed those limits, but if you do, contact me for pricing.
Kerio®, and related trademarks, names and logos are the property of Kerio Technologies, Inc. and are registered and/or used in the U.S. and other countries. Used under license from Kerio Technologies, Inc.
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