The success of an organisation depends on its adherence to the needs and well-being of its employees.

The Indian Constitution has many laws regarding labour welfare. There are laws for payment and wages that ensure that the employees are getting the right compensation for their services. Regulations are in place for strictly dealing with workplace sexual harassment. The laws for provident funds make sure that the employees’ future is secure even post-retirement.

However, depending on the industry, the state in which the organisation is operating, and the kind of business it deals with, the labour laws vary in complexity. Organisations need to comply with different state and federal laws, which add to the overall compliance complexity.

Especially with the pandemic situation, this problem has escalated manifold. Different stakeholders in the organisation are dealing with various internal and external uncertainties. Working with distributed teams, keeping track of all the labour law compliance issues manually, is next to impossible for them.

Therefore, there is a need for a smart technology solution that can relieve the stakeholders and, thus, the organisation from having to take care of all the major and minor legal mandates. With this off their shoulders, they should be able to focus on building a better workplace for the employees that would, in turn, bring them better business results.

Fortunately, such solutions are available in the market. Hence. it would be really helpful to understand what the organisations should expect from such solutions.

Here is a compiled list of some important features that a Labour Law compliance solution must-have.

Employee Management
Indeed, one of the most important features has to be the solution’s ability to manage the employee life cycle. Different laws need to be taken care of throughout an employee’s engagement with the organisation. For example, during the joining and termination phase of the employee, all the social security benefits for an employee, including employee compensation, gratuity, state insurance, etc. need to be tracked and calculated accurately. Right from the time of onboarding, there are multiple documents that the state and the central laws require from the employee.

The technology solution should be smart enough to onboard such documents and make them accessible as and when required by the authorities in the organisation. As far as the payroll is concerned, the solution should be able to calculate employee’s payroll, maintain a register for it, and generate payslips, etc. Even at the time of employment termination, the solution should be able to run all the necessary audits and inspections for the employee’s final settlement.

Repository Maintenance
There are more than 100 acts and over 400 rules when it comes to labour laws in India. Maintaining manual registers and forms is extremely time-consuming and prone to errors. Your labour law compliance technology solution should provide a comprehensive e-repository of all the documents related to acts and requirements. With real-time, anywhere, anytime access to the most updated repository, organisations can ensure up-to-date compliance with all the relevant laws. An efficient solution should be able to scale these tasks, even for a large workforce.

Real-Time Notifications
There is no point in maintaining the records for all the acts and requirements if all the stakeholders are not duly notified about them. Any important event with regard to the government actions, compliance due dates, or any changes in the employee engagement should be notified to all the concerned stakeholders in real-time. Moreover, regular reminders about important events pertaining to the workforce, such as payment of bonus, or labour contract, etc. should also be provided. All the necessary due dates and expiry dates should be known to the stakeholders well before time. When planned smartly, such real-time and timely notifications and reminders can save the organisation a lot of expenses on penalties and fines.

Intelligent Reporting
The labour law compliance solution should be proactive to plan and share all the necessary reports that would keep the organisation well-informed about the compliance status. These reports can be used by the organisation stakeholders to understand the vulnerabilities in the compliance structure. Therefore, it is important that these reports are created in a well-defined structure. Such reports should allow the different stakeholders, working with the different aspects of the organisation, to understand the state of affairs and act on them decisively. It should be easy for all the stakeholders to generate and view the required reports without the need of any IT experts.

360-Degree View of Compliance Status
With all the features taking care of the various aspects of labour law compliance, the solution needs to provide a comprehensive view of the overall compliance status of the organisation. This means that the solution should enable business owners to have a 360-degree view of all that is going on within the organisation from the context of labour laws compliance. The best way to ensure this is through a well-designed, up-to-date dashboard. Drill-down dashboards that can be customised based on the roles of different users can help everyone to have a consolidated view of the compliance status.

Scalability and Accessibility
Compliance management for a growing workforce requires the technology solution to be scalable. In addition to that, the solution also needs to be accessible from practically anywhere in the world. Especially now, when almost everyone is working from home, availability becomes an important aspect. Therefore, it is important for the solution to be cloud-based. Working with cloud infrastructure would allow the solution to be accessible 24/7 from anywhere, and to any number of users.

Security
Compliance data and documents are highly confidential and need to be accessed only by the certain designated stakeholders. The technology solution you chose should ensure data security and safety. It should also allow organisations to define various roles and user access levels to allow only authorised personnel to access the information. Even with a distributed workforce, such a solution should ensure data security and privacy.

Conclusion
Labour laws are meant to build a strong relationship between the organisation and its labours/ employees. Adherence to these laws would encourage a positive and productive work environment in the organisation. While the business leaders brainstorm about innovative ways to grow the organisation, efficient labour law compliance solutions can take care of the necessary mandates.

Connect with us to know about Virtual Compliance Manager, India’s first solution combining a powerful cloud-based Compliance Platform and Core Integra’s compliance expertise.