The Skinny on Employee Information Management

Shawnee Love   •  
October 21, 2011

If you have more than a couple employees, you will find it is much more efficient to have a centralized database (spreadsheet at its simplest or better yet, specialized software) to track employee information rather than to have to go into each employee’s file anytime you need information. Additionally, this type of database is worth its weight in gold for the time it saves you each time you want to:

  • Pull information (e.g., about demographics, length of tenure, amount of education & training), and
  • Run metrics (such as turnover, retention, revenue/employee).

A good employee information management system enables you to look at the big picture of your people activities and can help forecast and cost out future initiatives such as wage increases, etc.

As an employer, you should be aware that privacy legislation requires you to collect, use, manage, and disclose employee information carefully. Within those activities, I emphasize two key elements necessary to doing a good job of complying with the privacy rules:

  • Communication to your employees about what you are collecting, using and storing, why you need it, and how you are keeping it secure.
  • Management of the information in a fashion that meets your obligations under privacy law (and meets your commitments to your employees) including ensuring correctness, security and privacy.

My sound bites to clients on employee information management are:

  1. Collect only what you need.
  2. Release information on a need to know basis.

The ability to review trends and monitor metrics goes a long way towards gaining a handle on the big picture of what is happening in your organization. Furthermore, metrics in combination with goals and knowledge of what is happening around you sets the stage for effective planning and taking action before the molehill becomes a mountain.

If you have an interest in this topic, come back next week and we will talk about the kinds of information you need to collect to manage individuals and the entire organization.