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, or training materials. And puts it all into one location, making it easier for employees to find what they need! Nowadays, as employees are used to having instant information right at their fingertips, an employee portal is essential for companies to offer a great employee experience.
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.
Five’s Ready-To-Use Employee Portal
Our fully featured, scalable Employee Portal lets you manage employee data, payroll, leave and headcount growth intuitively and in one place. We designed our employee portal specifically for teams like yours – giving you exactly what you need without overwhelming features you’ll never use.
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 immediately by accessing our prebuilt employee portal and having it run in a single afternoon.
With our portal, you can:
- Access a user-friendly web interface that lets you manage employees, payroll and leave requests.
- Roll out the portal and grant access to employees and heads of department: the portal is login-protected, so 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.
How to Create an Employee Portal with Five
If you prefer building an employee portal entirely from scratch, rather than starting with our ready-to-use, prebuilt portal that lets you manage employees, payroll, leave requests and approvals, follow the steps below to get started.
Step 1: Access the Prebuilt Employee Portal
The best place to start your development is our prebuilt employee portal. It comes with all the essential features for better HR management.
By starting with a prebuilt portal, you can save significant time on essential features. For example, every employee portal must be login protected, so that sensitive information about employees or their payroll isn’t revealed to the public. Our portal comes with preconfigured authentication, so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and build out this functionality from scratch.
Our portal also covers payroll and automated leave requests. In short, it comes with all the features you’d be looking for and it’s an ideal platform to add enhancements or customizations.
Step 2: List Out Employee Portal Attributes
Start by compiling a comprehensive list of all the attributes relevant to your employee portal that are unique to your company. Do you often work with contractors? Do you have seasonal hiring needs? Do you run a shift-based business?
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 this list 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
Equipped with your list of customizations and enhancements, you can start to prioritize. What are essential features? Which ones are nice to have, and which ones are optional? This gives a clear view of your portal and its desired long-term state.
Step 3: Enhance and Customize Your Employee Portal
Now it is time to enhance and customize your portal. Our prebuilt employee portal is completely expandable.
Say, you need
✅ A custom dashboard for management to monitor paid hours in a service business,
✅ Another user role with access to monthly HR reports,
✅ An external access for contractors or part-timers,
✅ In-app or email notifications for newly hired staff’s onboarding.
These and other features can be quickly added to the prebuilt portal, making it 100% work for your business.
Conclusion: Building an Employee Portal
A well-designed employee portal is essential for organizations managing a growing workforce. With tools like Five, a well-designed custom portal is in easy reach. Start with our preconfigured solution so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Move on from there and prioritize enhancements and customizations. Have them implemented rapidly and cost-effectively.
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.
