What is employee self-service, and how does it lighten HR's workload?

How do you roll out employee self-service?

Self-service starts not with switching on software but with deciding who sees what. It is then tried with a small pilot team, announced to staff, and HR's request channels are moved onto the new screen. If the old channels stay open, people keep going back to email and phone out of habit.

1. Write the visibility rule. Set out in one table which fields the employee, manager and HR roles can see and which they can change.
2. Make sure the data is right. A screen showing the wrong balance raises more questions than no screen at all; clean up leave balances and manager assignments first.
3. Pick a pilot team. Run it for a month with two or three departments and note the questions asked most often.
4. Announce it. Share a short guide covering how to sign in, the password rule and two-step verification.
5. Move the channel. Stop accepting leave requests by email after a set date.
6. Measure it. Compare the number of routine questions reaching HR before and after the pilot.

Which tasks can move to self-service?

The tasks best suited to self-service are the most repetitive ones with clear rules: balance checks, leave requests, viewing documents and approvals. Anything that needs judgement, changes pay directly or touches someone else's data should stay with HR. The clearer the line, the more staff trust the system.

What does employee self-service cover?

Viewing their own personnel card, checking remaining leave, requesting leave and following its outcome, reaching their own payslip, reading and acknowledging documents sent to them, and completing onboarding tasks. Each of these replaces a phone call or email that reaches HR today.

What does manager self-service cover?

Approving or rejecting the team's requests from one list, seeing the team leave calendar and following the team's attendance. Managers see the information they need to run their work; a team member's pay, ID number or health details fall outside this scope.

What should employees never see?

Other employees' personal details, pay and reasons for sick leave should never appear on any self-service screen. If a leave calendar is opened up, show only “on leave” rather than the type of leave; otherwise details such as a sick note or a child's treatment start circulating within the team.

What does KVKK say about self-service?

Article 11 of KVKK (Türkiye's Personal Data Protection Law No. 6698) gives employees the right to learn whether their data is processed, to ask for information and to request that wrong data be corrected. Self-service answers some of these questions in advance, but it does not replace the formal application process.

KVKK Art. 11 lists the data subject's rights: to learn whether data is processed and why, to know the third parties it is transferred to, to request correction of incomplete or wrong data, to request deletion where the conditions are met, and to claim compensation for damage. Under Art. 13, the data controller concludes an application free of charge as quickly as its nature allows and within thirty days at the latest.

For employee data, the employer is the data controller. A self-service screen makes it easier for staff to see their own record; a formal application, however, goes to the employer and is answered through the employer's process. Every field shown on screen should match the purpose described in the privacy notice.

Where do Excel and paper break down without self-service?

Without self-service, HR answers every staff question one by one, and each answer is only as current as the spreadsheet HR holds. Approvals scatter across email and instant messages, and a request sits unowned while the manager is away. The problems below are common in this setup.

• “How many days of leave do I still have?” arrives every month from the same people and breaks up HR's day.
• Paper leave forms wait on a manager's desk, with no record of whether they were approved.
• Payslips sent by email risk going to the wrong recipient.
• The manager's team calendar lives in a separate sheet that does not match HR's balances.

How does self-service work in Sora İK?

In Sora İK, self-service is not a separate data set but a screen that shows personnel file, leave, PDKS and payroll records to employees and managers; each employee sees their own record, while a manager sees everyone reporting to them directly or indirectly, without extra permission settings. It opens in a phone browser today, with no app to install. iOS and Android apps are on the roadmap.

Employees see their own card, their leave balance and the projected balance after a request, and they open leave requests here. They clock in with the QR code at the location, see their own payslip from finalised payroll runs, download their documents and confirm they have read them. Managers handle their team's requests from the approval list; pay and payroll data are visible by default to HR and the company owner only.

Multi-step approval and delegation are set up with the HR approval workflow designer. Roles follow the roles and permissions rules: the company owner can grant any role, while the system administrator can assign only the team manager and employee roles.

On the roadmap: employee requests to change their details, clock-in correction requests, opening the team leave calendar to staff, company announcements and general requests such as advances or documents. Today, when an employee's details change, HR makes the change on the personnel card. For details: Employee & Manager Self-Service — full feature list.

What should IT and management watch for?

Self-service turns every employee into a user account; a company of one hundred people gains one hundred new entry points. So the password rule, two-step verification and closing the accounts of leavers should be planned before the screens. The account lifecycle should run on the same timetable as onboarding and offboarding.

• Password policy: Sora İK requires passwords of at least 10 characters and rejects common passwords; passwords are stored as one-way hashes using argon2id.
• Two-step verification: the company owner can make two-step verification with an authenticator app mandatory across the company. At the very least, require it on accounts with approval or payroll rights.
• Leavers' accounts: in Sora İK today, closing a leaver's sign-in account falls to the company owner or the system administrator; until it is closed, the person can still sign in after their leaving date. Add this to your exit checklist; automatic closure on the leaving date is on the roadmap.
• Audit trail: every approval and rejection is written to the request history and the audit log together with the user who decided. Other measures are summarised in the Sora İK security section.

Modules that work with self-service

Self-service creates no data of its own; it opens the records held in the leave, approval workflow, roles and personnel file modules to employees and managers. The guides below explain how those records are set up.

• Annual leave tracking guide: Tracking annual leave through entitlement, balance and approval steps.
• HR approval workflow guide: Designing leave and document approval flows with steps, roles, conditions and delegation rules.
• HR software security guide: A vendor-neutral IT checklist for role-based access, two-step verification and audit logs.
• Digital personnel file guide: Document groups, steps for moving from paper to digital and access rules for managing personnel files.

Frequently asked questions

Do self-service accounts cost extra?

Not in Sora İK. Packages are priced by the number of active employees, and each active personnel card is counted once; giving an employee a sign-in account does not raise that number. For example, the yearly price for 1–10 active employees is ₺18,000 (November 2026, excluding VAT). All packages are listed under Sora İK pricing.

What information can employees see in self-service?

Employees should see only records about themselves: their personnel card, leave entitlement and balance, request history, their own clock-in records, finalised payslips and documents sent to them. Other employees' pay, identity details or reasons for sick leave should never reach a self-service screen under any circumstances. Fix the rule in your role definitions.

Who approves requests when a manager is on leave?

If you do not define this in advance, requests wait until the manager returns. In Sora İK, when no approval flow is set up, the next-level manager or HR can decide; when a flow is set up, the approver of the next step and HR can decide. An approver going on leave can set a delegation for their own steps, valid for specific dates.

Can employee self-service be used on a phone?

Sora İK's self-service screen opens today in a phone or tablet browser, with no separate app to install. Clock-in also works from the phone: the employee scans the QR code posted at the site. iOS and Android apps are on the roadmap. For phone access, keeping two-step verification switched on matters, given the risk of lost or stolen devices.

Which HR tasks does self-service reduce?

The biggest drop is in balance questions, chasing leave forms, sending payslips and documents, and approval reminders. These are the tasks that cut HR's day into small pieces. The time saved goes into defining rules, handling exceptions and checking data; self-service takes over the tasks where HR carries information, not the ones where HR makes decisions.