Introduction

The ever-changing workplace environment requires the use of tools necessary for a better understanding of numerous aspects of the environment around each employee of a company. Continuous development and rapid change in either the structure of the organization or roles assignment allow for a more flexible approach to a number of tasks, but at the same time leave room for potential error. Maintaining the pool of employees to ensure satisfaction or proficiency in the corresponding divisions may pose a challenge for any HR Team. Cornerstone OnDemand comes with a number of tools to help manage and reduce the workload put on different, sometimes mundane tasks.

Dynamic Groups

Any HR suite allows for the management of employees hired by an organization. It is, after all, one of the fundamental functionalities of such software. Assigning a user to a specific department of the organization or a given position is not a novelty either, and while Cornerstone OnDemand’s approach to organization units is quite a different one, it is a specific type of them that cannot go unnoticed. The dynamic groups that are the feature in question here can not only provide a quicker way of identifying users with given characteristics but a more accurate one as well.

Let us imagine the idea of a unit like Department or Location, but inverted. Instead of adding users to a department, one is able to create an entity that collects employees automatically based on the department, location or position they belong to. Instead of going through the miles-long lists of users and creating a passel of those who, for instance, completed a specific training, the HR specialists can choose that exact same training to be a condition for the dynamic group and organically gather the necessary people. 

Recurring Assignments

Depending on the industry, different types of training are necessary for the employees to complete. What does not change, however, is the fact that each organization has a number of courses that need to be retaken after a given period of time, be it a couple of months or years.

Cornerstone OnDemand’s Learning module allows for the assignment of specific courses to specific users, and it surely comes as no surprise. What proves that it has been prepared with HR specialists in mind is the set of options available for the HR administrators when creating the learning assignments. One of the possibilities is to set up the recurring assignment, which will automatically reassign the given training to a user or a group of them. Not only that, but the assignment can verify whether the previous instance of the same training has been finished or not and act accordingly based on the decisions of the HR team. 

Off-cycle Performance Review Tasks

Now and then comes the time when the HR Team needs to get together and plan a performance review. Everyone is analyzing the process since the last review, and then all the experts brainstorm together on the possible improvements and biggest pain points. The result of all the necessary actions is, of course, a new, improved process that is applied at the start of the performance review period. All the managers, subordinates, and project members state their opinions on the goals, achievements and values represented by their colleagues or themselves. While the input generated by all the participants is of great value, the importance of not forgetting to incorporate the feedback of people not related to an employee on a daily basis cannot be overstated. A colleague from a different department can provide just as valuable data on another employee after a series of unintended or intended interactions.

The question is: should such a person’s review be disregarded on the basis of the two being allocated to distant organizational units? With Cornerstone OnDemand’s off-cycle tasks, it is possible to submit a review even when the reviewer is not a part of the regular performance review process. Each appraiser has the possibility to choose whom they would like to report, and based on the HR team’s decision, such a review would or would not be included in the ratings for the periodic performance appraisal.

Electronic Signature

At each organization, gathering acknowledgements on either SOPs or training completions is a necessity in order to stay compliant or simply ensure the employees are aware of procedures applying to a specific position. While it is still a standard practice in some companies to gather printouts with wet ink signatures, it can become bothersome for the HR departments to gather, collect and archive such documents, especially nowadays when remote work is not uncommon and many employees do not visit the company premises daily.

The electronic signature is one of the features of CSOD that comes to the rescue. Additional authentication that is required in order to provide the signature makes sure that no unauthorized personnel have the chance to forge the confirmation in place of the corresponding person. The timestamp stored in the system together with the signature allows for the acknowledgements to be tracked by the HR team, and the reportability of the feature ensures that the appropriate administrators can receive the information on employees who have signed the documents off and who have not.

Connect

How troublesome can it be to gather a group of SMEs in order to either provide guidance to a group of users, maybe project members, or conduct a training session on a given subject?

Depending on the size of the organization, it might be greater or lesser, but nonetheless challenging. People working in different timezones, in different departments, and having their own tasks at hand at the time they are needed —those factors and many others make it difficult to gather a panel of experts for different necessary activities.

With the Connect Communities functionality, it is possible to gather all the interested parties in one place and allow for asynchronous knowledge sharing wherever they are. With a few clicks in the portal, the HR administrator is able to create a space and assign specific roles to people who join it. The possibility to associate specific training objects with the community adds to the co-learning experience. 

Conclusion

The five features of Cornerstone OnDemand are simply the beginning of what the HR system can provide any HR team with. The tools mentioned in the article are supposed to help navigate the needs of the employees as well as the administrators of the system. Utilizing them provides additional opportunities to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a given group and remedy or reward a given situation. More accuracy in data gathering combined with less time consumed for the process definitely proves that Cornerstone OnDemand can become a useful asset to the HR team of any organization.

Piotr Gerwatowski
Implementation Consultant

Q&A Summary: 5 pain-solving features of Cornerstone OnDemand