Message for today’s admin teams – brighthr does it!

The CfA (Council for Administration) launches its free, interactive web-based support tool ‘brighthr’, in London this week, to support ongoing skills development and HR planning.

A free of charge application, ‘brighthr’ has been designed to instantly create effective, tailor-made HR documentation for non-HR professionals including office and administrative staff.  Fully interactive templates allow quick and easy production of everything needed to select, recruit and appraise employees using the Business, Administration and Governance National Occupational Standards (NOS).

You can access the tool by clicking here: www.brighthr.co.uk

With UK companies shedding workforce to counteract the economic downturn, it is important, now even more than before, to find cost-effective solutions that reduce workload for existing employees and improve their productivity at the same time.

‘brighthr’ does just this by automatically creating tailor-made HR documents including job descriptions, job specifications, induction programmes, appraisal materials, interview questions and review information to save time and costs. It acts as an ideal source of information to provide authentic HR documents ready for use in the workplace. As each document is based on the Business, Administration and Governance NOS, it ensures that recruitment and performance management tools are in line with nationally recognised competency standards.

Regularly updated, to ensure that users have the most recent version, the ‘brighthr’ tool also reduces the potential for errors in document completion and avoids duplication of work. Data only needs to be entered once to ensure that documents are accurately and securely completed. Access is via secure registration, so users have complete piece of mind, knowing that information is fully protected.

There are currently around four and a half million people employed in business & admin, representing 16% of all employees in the UK. Research has shown that by 2014 there will be a shortfall of nearly one and a half million administrators unless drastic action is taken and the ones working today will have ever-increasing workloads in the meantime: "As the standard setting body for Business & Admin qualifications, it is part of our role to improve the role of business administrators across the UK and to remind people of what is on offer to help them in their work. ‘brighthr’ provides the CfA with an opportunity to show how we can help," said CfA CEO Jenny Hewell.
 
"Part of what we will be doing is educating the market. We need to educate people about the value of using admin tools based on the NOS and we also need to educate employers about the specific value of providing these for employees involved in Business & Admin. Proper use of relevant tools to streamline and speed up processes can be the difference between success and failure for a business. This is something that is vital in today's economy," said Hewell.
 
Importantly, therefore, the CfA is talking to its stakeholders and targeting SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) as well as large corporates: "Most large companies are already fully aware of the benefits of using online tools to help simplify their processes,” said Hewell. “We believe that there is a massively untapped market amongst the UK SME community. So we are communicating with our stakeholders and small businesses, particularly those with HR managers, talking to them about the benefits of using a free, online tool. There are huge benefits for them, not least in using the NOS as their benchmark and in reduced admin costs but also in better motivated staff and a resulting increase in productivity."