Within Natural HR, you can send SMS (text messages) to your employees to notify them of key events or for the purposes of business continuity/disaster recovery. E.g. "Please do not come into Office X today, instead make your way to Office Y or work from home". 

Please note, this is a paid "add-on" and priced per message sent. 

In order to enable SMS within your account, please contact us directly to set this up as we'll need to issue a dedicated mobile number for your organisation to use which then allows you to receive replies to messages you send. 

SMS Settings 

Once enabled, the first step is to go to the SMS settings under:

Administration -> Company -> Settings -> SMS settings 

Within the SMS settings page, you can choose one of three options for sending the messages:

1) Work mobile then personal – this will send the message to work mobiles (if there’s a number against this field on the employee file). If there isn't a work mobile number on file, the message will be sent to personal mobile on file instead.

2) Work mobile ONLY - this will send the message to work mobiles only (providing the number is present on the employee file).

3) Personal mobile ONLY - this will send the message to personal mobiles only (providing the number is present on the employee file).

Sending an SMS

You will then be ready to start sending messages on behalf of your organisation under:

Administration -> HR -> SMS Messaging 

You will be presented with a table (which will appear blank on first use) click on the "Send" button. 

You will then be taken to a page where the narrative can be added for your message.

As you start typing your message you'll be able to see how many characters you've used. 1 message is 160 characters, you can continue to send a longer message but this will cost 2 messages until 320 characters and so on. 

Once you've typed your message, you can then select who to send the message to.

Once you've selected either "All job roles" or your specific groups, click the "Send" button at the bottom of the page. 

The previous table will now be populated with all of your sent messages and any replies your organisation receives from employees. 

SMS Status

There are five status types you will see within the SMS table: 

Queued - please note, all messages will initially be in the queued status for up to 5 minutes until the message is sent to the recipient. 

Sent - the message has been sent to the recipient from Natural HR's side. 

Rejected - means that the message has been sent but has not been accepted by the receiving network - it could be that the mobile number has been entered incorrectly in the employee file. 

Delivered - the message has arrived with the recipient's mobile carrier. 

Received - indicates that you have received an incoming response from the employee. 

Replying to messages

Please note: SMS messages do not function the same as emails so it is not possible to have individual messages and replies to just that message. As a result, you will see all communication between the two numbers sorted by date.

When you have received a reply from an employee, you'll notice a curved arrow to the right-hand side of the received status. 

When you click on the curved arrow, you'll be taken through to the response. In here you can then reply to the employee if needed (this will incur a charge of 1 message per 160 characters). 

Lastly, you can view the whole thread of SMS communication with a particular employee by clicking on their name within the SMS table.  

Please take a look at our SMS datasheet to give an overview of our services.