Benefits of Human Resource Portals Essay

Torres-Coronas & Arias-Oliva define a human resource portal as a set of applications which avails a single gateway to personalized as well as customized information (2005). It is worth mentioning that Portal strategies are currently being either adopted or employed in many modern organizations. This has been necessitated by the need of organization to implement one common base in terms of Human Resource procedures and policies throughout the organization. In addition, there is an increase in the number of international branches in several organizations due to the urge for global expansion. With this background this paper will objectively discuss the reasons for the popularity of human resource portals among the human resource managers. Human resource portals enable the human resource managers to experience enterprise unification especially if a global HR portal is put in place. This solution ensures the provision of better services to the employees. Besides, human resource managers in global organizations find it very easy to connect directly with the employees and the entire workforce of the firm in all locations. Employees can easily access all the relevant services via the employee portal and as such the human resource manager does not have to attend to each individual employee unless under very special circumstances. This consequently reduces the workload of the human resource managers due to the availability of short cut processes (Torres-Coronas & Arias-Oliva, 2005). Additionally, the managers are in a better position to focus on the achievement of organizational strategic goals. A case in point is the Time Warner’s portal, which is referred to as the Employee Connection. This portal gives the 80,000 employees of this organization, expense reimbursement, access to benefits enrollment and other services (Robb, 2006). The recruitment process has equally been made easier, faster and more efficient. Considering global staffing technology and operations, the BearingPoint portal is a milestone achievement when it comes to global recruitment. Its â€Å"Called Career Connections† enables employees to access and apply for jobs internationally, thus making it very simple for human resource managers to carry out recruitment. Moreover, the referral section found in this portal allows for online employee referrals that give room for new employees, unlike initially where the firm relied on premium job boards which were very expensive (Robb, 2006). It is worth mentioning that these portals are usually affected by issues such as local regulations in terms of taxation as well as privacy. For instance, the Data Privacy Directive employed within the European Union which restricts transmission and monitors the type of data in question. This therefore implies that some employees working in other international branches of any firm may not be able to access information stored in other parts of the world (Hildebrandt & Gutwirth, 2008). However, when the right measures are put in place, there are more advantages that come with the employment of these portals and as such human resource portals are increasingly become more popular among the human resource managers.