A single HR system holds the most varied sensitive data in any organisation: salary, health information, disciplinary records, and notes managers wrote in a hurry. That concentration is the reason these products are useful and the reason the permission model deserves more attention than any feature on the comparison sheet.
Test roles against real cases
Can a manager see a subordinate's salary, and should they. Can an HR administrator read every disciplinary record in the organisation. Can a payroll user see absence reasons. Take four real cases into a trial and check each, because defaults in these products are consistently broader than any employer would choose deliberately.
Health and occupational health data
Absence reasons and occupational health reports need a narrower audience than the rest of the record and often a separate store. Products that keep them as ordinary attachments on an employee record make that difficult, and the weakness only becomes visible when a live case arrives and the wrong person can read it.
Notes, and who eventually reads them
Free text fields accumulate manager comments that were never intended to be seen by the subject and frequently are, because people are entitled to their own records. Say so to managers at rollout. It changes what gets written, which is the point, and it prevents the most avoidable category of grievance.
Questions people ask about human resources saas
Who should be able to see salary?
A short list, usually HR, payroll and the manager with budget responsibility. Broad visibility is the commonest configuration error.
Can employees see their own records?
They generally have a right to, which is a reason to write notes accordingly rather than a reason to restrict access.
Should occupational health sit in the HR system?
Only with tighter permissions, and many organisations keep it separate. Check what the product allows before deciding.