Human resource departments in both small and large businesses are responsible for completing a plethora of tasks. Today, many companies rely on enterprise content management software to help human resource managers t.o reduce the amount of time that the various duties take. Because human resources jobs are document & form driven, human resources management professionals are increasingly relying on a combination of enterprise HCM software with HR automation to make their departments more efficient and to save money.
What is HR automation?
Enterprise HCM software is used by human resource management professionals to do the following:
Import documents into digital repositories
Organize imported documents so that they are searchable and retrievable
Storing files in standard formats for sharing to multiple devices
Archive records
Make audits simpler by making it easier to gather information
HR automation helps with these processes by handling critical administrative tasks that are otherwise time-consuming. With HR automation, the power of a business’s workflow can be embraced. By automating repetitive tasks, HR management professionals can collect, create and update data and make different workflows available to different users, depending on their positions and jobs. This can help to make companies much more efficient, rules-driven and streamlined. Another area that can be greatly streamlined with HR automation is a company’s communication system. When HR management automates how it handles alerts, it can help personnel to understand which alerts are truly important so that they can be escalated to the appropriate personnel. HR automation allows people to manage their businesses by exception so that they can easily spot and deal with deviations from the business’s norm.
Why HR automation?
When HR management automates human resources, the human resources staff are freed up so that they can attend to their jobs with greater efficiency. Handling payroll is a good example of how a human resources worker’s time may be used more efficiently. Traditionally, payroll has entailed personnel spending hours or days entering in payroll data. With automation, the staff can complete a couple of simple steps in order to complete the process. This can help them to focus their efforts on other beneficial duties such as working on strategies to help the company grow stronger.
When human resources management begins implementing HR automation, companies begin to see improvements in profit and productivity almost immediately. When HR employees are able to get more done with automation, they also become more motivated. People who feel as if they are accomplishing their goals have better morale. Companies also get more work in return for the same amount of money. Automation also helps with human capital management in a more precise way.
Increased precision in human resource processes also helps to simplify jobs. When human resources processes are automated, checking and managing information such as vacation days or benefits can be completed with a quick search. This obviates the need to pull files or to send requests to the HR department. When the information is readily accessible to all of the people who might need it, the workflow is greatly simplified.
The most important benefit of HR automation is security. When HR management personnel automate human resources, they can back up the company’s data to online servers. This helps to prevent losing years of data in the event of a fire, a theft or an equipment failure. Automation also helps to prevent unnecessary expenses, legal troubles and tax problems caused by human resources mistakes. Error rates significantly decrease with automation.
How do you know when it’s time for HR automation?
No matter their size, all businesses can benefit from automation. It is especially important for businesses when they notice that error rates are increasing. Companies that have unsustainable operations costs may also benefit from the savings that automation can offer. Inadequate reporting should also prompt HR management to implement an HR automation strategy. Finally, when a business is growing and expanding, automation can make the work involved with tracking hundreds of employees much easier.
What should you automate?
Almost any repetitive job duty can be automated. In human resources departments, there are 10 areas which most HR management personnel believe are the most obvious processes for HR automation.
1. Onboarding
Onboarding may involve significant paperwork, signing contracts, completing benefits paperwork and other necessary duties. When onboarding new hires, the workflows and the onboarding process itself are greatly improved by automation. The processing time for all of the different documents that are required in the onboarding process may be decreased to a few hours rather than a week. It also helps to make certain that newly hired personnel receive all of the needed equipment and grants of system access in a timely manner.
2. Employee personal data
When a company is very small, managing the personal information of employees isn’t too difficult. When a company adds employees, tracking and keeping all of the employees’ personal information up-to-date can be a nightmare for human resources personnel. Updating employee data helps HR management with HCM. The chances of data loss and manual entry errors are greatly reduced.
3. Timesheets
Validating and tracking timesheets can be a very inefficient and time-consuming task. When time sheet approval processes are automated, the data collection and validation of the information is much faster. This also helps to save HR personnel from manually updating an employee’s records.
4. Performance appraisal process
A large majority of HR management professionals simply do not have the time that is required to update the performance records of employees. Not receiving feedback from managers and not having good metrics leads to inaccuracies. When automation is used, validating performance helps to ensure that the records are systematically updated and can allow companies to easily see how their employees are performing.
5. Offboarding
Offboarding of employees can be tricky. When an employee is terminated, employee termination documents must be gathered and processed, the return of equipment must be supervised and steps must be taken to make certain that the terminated employees are no longer receiving pay and benefits. Automation of the offboarding process can make completing all of these tasks much easier and help to prevent issues that could open a company up to legal problems.
6. Leave requests
Employees request leave for many different reasons. When there are leave requests that are submitted, it can be time-consuming to process them all. This may make it difficult for HR management and staff to approve leave requests in time. HR automation of leave request processes can help to secure approvals much faster while also allowing the employee’s leave records to be updated instantly. This can help businesses to track, manage and approve employee leaves much more efficiently.
7. Expense claims
Before automation, expense management was an especially arduous task. People would have to sift through stacks of documents along with numerous Excel spreadsheets. This took many employee hours to manage all of the information. Despite all of the work involved, expenses could still be costly, be dated and inaccurate. The manual process for expense claims would usually start with an employee completing an expense report on paper or an Excel spreadsheet. He or she would then forward it along with invoices and receipts to his or her manager. The manager would then review the submitted document and invoices, approve the expense claim and send it to the accounting department. There, personnel would process every expense item into the company’s system before it could be filed. The entire process would need to occur for every expense claim, no matter how small it might be. When that is repeated over and over again in a large company, it can quickly mushroom into an ongoing and frustrating process. HR automation of the expense claim process is helpful. When the manual processes are removed, it reduces employee stress as well as the likelihood of accounting errors.
8. Training requests
When HR management implements automation, employees can self-manage their training requests. Employees may be allowed to apply for particular training courses on the HR system. HR departments can create workflows so that the details of the training are added to the employee’s record when he or she completes it.
9. Safety Hazard/Incidents
When an accident happens at work and someone is injured, there reports must be filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers’ compensation systems and others. Automating the incident reporting process can make it much simpler. The information can be quickly transferred from form to form and forwarded to the appropriate agencies.
10. Benefits
When people are newly hired, they often will not be eligible for benefits until after they complete a probationary period. Automating benefits processes can let human resources staff to immediately know when employees become eligible for benefits. The information can be updated to the person’s payroll and records automatically as well.
It is easy to see why HR automation can greatly improve the efficiency of human resources departments as well as the entire company. Decreasing error rates, increasing productivity and motivation can help businesses to improve their bottom lines and to retain quality staff. HR automation means better HR management.