Often, HR activities are focused in performing repetitive and laborious tasks than getting involved in actual strategic aspects of the business like streamlining. In these regards, this post showcases, how Automation of HR can make HR teams more strategic and streamline your company to increase productivity.
What is HR Automation?
HR automation has been developed to ease the strain on HR departments and free up some of their valuable time from mundane tasks so HR teams can focus on employee ended and improve your company’s workplace.
For many, the definition of HR automation is a bit cloudy but here from a recent HR whitepaper we find a definition to trust:
HR automation is the process to improve the efficiency of human resources departments through automating the manual human resource processes and eliminating information-centered risks.”
- CIO Whitepapers
HR automation has many different names including, HRIS [Human Resource Information System], HRMS [Human Resource Management System], HR software, HR solutions – the list goes on.
HR automation is when you have a system (or systems) of processes that connect your HR department to the information you require digitally. The automation of time-consuming and often repetitive tasks in Human Resources will free up much-needed time that will allow your HR management to focus on more important tasks at hand, such as employee satisfaction and retention. To make an educated decision, it is imperative for your company’s management team to sit down together to discuss and identify your company’s needs, processes, and goals.
HR Automation Reduces Costs and Streamlines Your Company
Prior to understanding how HR automation reduces costs, we need to know that HR functions are not just restricted to pay scales, recruitment, and training. Rather, HR must take on the responsibilities as the team accountable for strategic activities such as:
- Perform workforce analytics to get the right talent placed in right position; so that employee can deliver better productivity and help the company to win over the competitors.
- Deliver better employee service experiences.
- Manage the vital functions of a business like expense management, compliance activities, PTO requests/tracking, and contract management.
The strategic involvement of HR in overall business strategy was even confirmed in a recent survey by CareerBuilder survey states which states, “73% of CEOs feel that HR have foremost input to the overall business strategy”.
The highly specialized team of HR professionals no longer need to be overwhelmed by repetive tasks that can be easily automated. Automation of HR resources can not only streamline operations but improve overall employee experiences.
HR automation does even more than simply streamlining or saving costs it can keeps HR free the human errors thatoften result in manual data collection process and tasks.
To get a broader view of how automation can streamline company activities, consider the below case:
Our employees love the fact that all of their benefits and company information is right at their fingertips.”
-HR Manager, Midwestern Technology Company
Many HR managers’ report on spending approximately 12 hours a week answering routine phone calls, emails with questions on benefits, time off reporting, and more. That’s nearly 1/3rd of the time they are in the office.
The Solution: In this case, automation processes provide an on-demand HR application in the form of a Chatbot or a self-assisting portal (learn more here), which processes employee requests and delivers employee support 24/7. In this way, HR automation can save 67% of HR time to use for other key tasks. Also, the employee onboarding time can be brought down to less than 3 working days, which when implemented manually may take more than 10 days.
The Mobile Benefit: Making HR services fully mobile provides quick self-service for employees; thereby increasing operational efficiencies of HR team and manage a widely scattered workforce. The result of this would be bi-directional transparency, benefiting employees and support teams as well. Also, getting proper strategy designed for mobile HR implementation would increase employee satisfaction and thereby reducing the turnover issues. Last but not least but maybe most important, “Happy Employees”.
Conclusion
HR automation can bring in “Agility” in your HR administration, streamline your business and stay ahead of your competitors.
