Create an Employee Portal In 3 Steps
Create an Employee Portal: Quick & Easy Guide
An employee portal is a web-based platform that provides employees with access to key company information and resources.
Employee portals contain important services and data, such as HR documents, payroll details, company announcements, and training materials. And puts it all into one location, making it easier for employees to find what they need.
However, creating an employee portal can be challenging, especially if you don’t have technical coding knowledge.
That’s where employee portal builders like Five come into play, making it easier to develop and deploy customized employee portals without extensive coding expertise.
Why Do You Need An Employee Portal?
An employee portal provides your workforce with 24/7 access to important company information and services. This convenience means employees can stay informed and engaged at any time, from anywhere.
From accessing HR documents, submitting leave requests, checking payroll details, or receiving company updates, an employee portal helps your operations, making it easier for employees to interact with your business.
For administrators, the benefits are just as significant.
An employee portal reduces the administrative burden by automating tasks such as processing leave requests, payroll information, and managing employee records. This not only saves time but also minimizes errors and ensures that all employee-related data is organized and easily accessible.
Admins can also use the portal to communicate important announcements and track employee performance, all from one platform.
Components of Your Employee Portal
When building your employee portal, you likely have some key features in mind, but there are a few essential components you might not have considered.
Firstly, a robust login system is crucial for secure employee access. This can include traditional username/password combinations, OAuth, or Single Sign-On (SSO) to ensure that only authorized personnel can access sensitive company information. Security is paramount, especially when dealing with payroll data, HR documents, and internal communications.
Next, a user-friendly dashboard is essential for displaying relevant employee information, such as notifications, upcoming tasks, and quick links to important resources. This dashboard should also include tools for managing personal information, submitting leave requests, and accessing company policies.
A backend database, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MongoDB, is necessary for storing employee data, payroll records, and other critical information. If managing a database seems daunting, tools like Five can simplify the process, making it easier to transition from a database to a fully functional employee portal.
Additionally, incorporating search capabilities is important to help employees find the information they need quickly. Advanced filtering options can further refine search results, making it easier for employees to navigate the portal and access the resources they need efficiently.
By including these components, you can create an employee portal that not only meets your organization’s needs but also enhances the overall employee experience.
Build or Buy Your Employee Portal
When it comes to implementing an employee portal, organizations face a critical decision: should you build a custom solution or buy an off-the-shelf product?
If you build one using tools like Five, you can develop exactly what you need without unnecessary features that add complexity. This allows you to tailor the portal to your organization’s specific requirements, ensuring a solution that fits perfectly with your existing processes.
Building a custom employee portal also means you can integrate it with your existing IT infrastructure, providing a single source of truth across all systems. This ensures compatibility with legacy systems, allowing you to work within the constraints of older software that might be difficult or expensive to replace.
Having control over your data is another significant benefit. With a custom-built portal, you retain full control over employee information, ensuring that sensitive data is protected. In contrast, off-the-shelf solutions may expose your data to third parties, posing potential security risks.
Building a secure employee portal becomes much more manageable with Five. Five offers several advantages: it accelerates the portal development process, requires minimal coding knowledge, is more cost-effective than hiring a developer, and allows you to customize your employee portal to meet your organization’s unique needs.
In the long run, building a custom solution can also be more cost-effective. The licensing fees for off-the-shelf solutions can quickly add up, with many employee portal platforms costing thousands of dollars annually.
Given the significant costs and potential limitations associated with many off-the-shelf solutions, this further supports the case for building a custom solution, especially for organizations with specific needs or those looking for greater control over their digital infrastructure.
Creating an Employee Portal Can Be Easy
Building employee management portals used to be a daunting task, requiring extensive coding knowledge and leading many organizations to hire “expert developers” who often delivered subpar results.
Fortunately, times have changed, and creating employee portals is now much easier with rapid portal builders like Five. These tools simplify the process, making it quicker and more accessible.
With Five, you no longer need to learn complex coding frameworks or spend hours researching expensive off-the-shelf solutions with high licensing fees. Instead, you can get started right away and have your employee portal built and running in a single afternoon.
While there may be a slight learning curve, this approach is objectively better than traditional methods.
With Five, you can:
- Set up your web interface in minutes: Create a fully functional, custom employee portal without needing extensive coding knowledge.
- Create a user-friendly, login-protected web interface: Ensure that only authorized personnel can access your employee data, enhancing security.
- Easily import your existing data: Get started quickly by importing your current employee information, making the transition smooth and efficient.
Get free access to Five here and start building your employee portal today.
How to Create an Employee Portal with Five
If building your employee portal with Five sounds interesting, here’s a quick guide to get you started.
Step 1: Access Five
If you haven’t already, sign up free access to Five. Five offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Depending on your project’s complexity and data storage needs, you may need to upgrade to a paid plan later.
Step 2: List Out Portal Attributes
Start by compiling a comprehensive list of all the attributes relevant to your employee portal. Consider what matters most to your HR management and operations: employee details, payroll information, performance records, benefits and more. Your employee portal should serve as a “single source of truth”, so make sure it’s as complete as possible.
Here are some essential attributes typically included in an employee portal system:
- User authentication and profile management
- Payroll tracking and management
- Employee performance and records
- Benefits administration and compliance tracking
- Leave requests and time-off management
- Training and development integration
- Reporting and analytics tools
Follow our YouTube tutorial on developing a membership application, which shares many similarities with an employee portal. This seven-step guide covers everything from database modeling to previewing your completed application. The first tutorial step explains how to create a database table in Five.
This four-and-a-half-minute video is highly recommended if your primary goal is developing an employee portal.
The video also demonstrates how to assign different SQL data types to your table fields and visually inspect your database schema using Five’s database modeler. Additionally, it shows how Five automatically adds primary keys to all your tables.
Step 3: Launch Your Employee Portal Online
Once your employee portal database is ready and well-structured, you can begin populating it with the necessary data.
Using Five, you can easily upload CSV files directly into your database. Ensure that the columns in your CSV align with the fields in your database, and import the data into your database tables.
Additionally, you can create a user-friendly, web-based database graphical user interface with Five. This interface can feature forms for adding or editing employee records, charts for visualizing HR data, and the ability to generate PDF reports, such as performance reviews or payroll summaries, using data from the database.
When you’re ready to deploy your employee portal, sign up for one of our paid plans, starting at just $29.99 per month per application. This plan includes unlimited end-users and provides you with a custom URL to access the portal online.
For more detailed guidance, check out one of our step-by-step code-along guides.
Conclusion: Building an Employee Portal
A well-designed employee portal is essential for organizations managing a growing workforce. With tools like Five, creating a custom employee portal has become more accessible than ever.
No longer do organizations need to settle for one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, they can rapidly build and deploy an employee portal that truly meets their operational needs.
Get free access to Five here and start building your employee portal today.
