There is hardly an HR professional who has never used Excel during their career. Basic spreadsheet skills are an unavoidable requirement for almost every office position. But is Excel really the right tool for HR work?
Excel can be used effectively in many areas of HR – from employee records, turnover, and average salary calculations to managing holidays, absences, recruitment, and other tasks. All of these tasks and many others are now handled by HR systems, which also offer further advantages over the “green master of spreadsheets”.
Why is Excel's time up?
Although Excel has many advantages, such as flexibility, data analysis capabilities, and low cost, it is not the best tool for the efficient work of an HR department – and that applies to small companies and start-ups as well.
Time demands and delays: In most cases, data does not flow into Excel automatically. Entering and updating it manually is tedious and wastes time that could be spent on more strategic tasks. Unlike specialized HR systems, Excel also offers no automated workflows, which means that many operations have to be carried out by hand
Risk of errors: Human errors in manual data entry can lead to incorrect calculations and reports. Even a small mistake in a single cell can cause major problems, such as incorrectly calculated wages.
Insufficient security: Excel spreadsheets are easy to share and copy, which increases the risk of leaks of sensitive data, including employees' personal information.
Lack of clarity: As a company grows and the number of employees rises, working with large amounts of data in Excel becomes inefficient and chaotic. On top of that, individual files may be stored in folders on a shared or personal drive. Unlike HR systems, which are logically categorized, we have to keep our folders and files in order ourselves. Who hasn't mistyped the name of a spreadsheet and then been unable to find it? Or accidentally saved a file to the wrong folder and had to do all the work over again?
Difficult version management and inefficient collaboration: When several people work on the same spreadsheet, problems can arise with updating data and synchronizing versions. Excel does not allow multiple people to collaborate effectively, which can lead to confusion, duplicated work, overwritten data, and a loss of overview.
Complicated reporting: Getting clear reports and analyses out of Excel can be demanding, especially when complex data sets are involved. It often requires deeper knowledge of functions and programming, which frequently goes beyond the job description of HR staff.
Look around for HR systems where data is entered automatically, changes are logged, data is secured, and everything is in one place, with access management and many other features that Excel does not offer. All of these requirements are met by the HR application Advanto People.
