Automation has been a goal of business bosses since the Industrial Revolution in England and it’s been a cause for consternation for staff for exactly as long. But in the 21st Century, there’s no reason for anyone to be Luddites about using technology to automate processes and help speed up business operations.
If you are not automating human resource practices in your workplace, then your business is already a step behind than its competitors.Tushar Bhatia
Automating human resources can have particular benefits, so we’ll look at what those can be in this post, as well as what you need to know to make it a success.
HR is an area where there are many business processes that are ripe for automation to improve efficiency and reduce risks in the areas of hiring, retaining and – when necessary – firing staff. The benefits of automation can be felt by staff across the business, including those in the HR department and by the company as a whole. Of course, there will always be a need for humans in human resources, wherever a situation requires complexity or sensitivity that is still beyond any software, but that’s no excuse for failing to explore automation.
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The Benefits of Automating Human Resources
So, what are the benefits you can expect to get from automating human resources within your business? Here’s a few of them:
Freeing up HR staff
The natural first instinct of your existing staff to the introduction of automation will be to fear for their jobs, but this doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing for them. Human Resources is an area of business that continues to grow in complexity and depth as companies learn more about organizational development, training, and staff retention techniques. However, if staff are busy with the more menial tasks, it’s harder for them to focus on areas that can offer more benefit to the business and offer more challenge and satisfaction for them.
Data security
Automating human resources means using software that can allow you to back-up your important data to cloud services, protecting you from losing data in fire or computer failures at your HQ. It also reduces the risk of errors that are a natural part of any manual process, and some of these errors can lead to big problems in terms of tax disputes, legal issues, and other costly problems.
Increase in productivity
As well as reducing the risks of costly errors and giving your HR staff time to work on other areas to improve your business, automated processes can also free up time for staff across the company when it comes to their own HR responsibilities. Everyone benefits from a system that is more slick and user-friendly, improving morale and boosting productivity.
Simple, efficient processes
Having automated human resources processes means that the business has so much more useful data available at the drop of a hat about payroll, attendance, etc, without needing HR staff to pull it together.
Consistency across locations
Businesses that have offices across countries and continents can struggle when it comes to human resources consistency and finding systems that work for everyone. Carefully selecting automated systems that meet the global needs can mean improved workflows across offices and better productivity and efficiency all around.
4 Human Resources Processes To Automate
Hopefully, we’ve convinced you that HR automation is the way forward with the above benefits, but the next key question is what should be automated? There are many processes in human resources and not all are appropriate for automation, so here’s our quick guide:
Annual leave
This is a process that can be almost overwhelming in large organizations where leave requests can come in thick and fast, especially around holiday seasons. Without automation, this can be a source of stress for HR staff and frustration for everyone else, especially if there are delays in getting leave agreed and booked. It also needs to be a transparent process that can be tracked and audited, all of which comes more easily through automation.
Timesheet tracking
Another daily process that can amount to a whole lot of repetitive work for HR staff is timesheet tracking. It’s an important process for managing workloads and for billing clients, so precision is also key and this can only be achieved through automation, which also makes it easier to pull off the required reports, all the while saving precious man hours.
Performance appraisals
A key part of managing staff performance across a company is through appraisals and this can also be a process that can tie up managers and HR staff alike in paperwork and bureaucracy, but an automated process not only means that more effective tracking and data can be generated but a lot of time can be saved. Instead of being a painful chore, appraisals can be a genuinely useful tool for tracking KPIs and performance across the company.
Onboarding new staff
This can be the most time-consuming of all activities for HR and also one of the most important to get right. Bringing new staff into the company requires a lot of human resource time and work, but automated solutions can reduce this to a matter of hours, ensuring that the new arrivals are met with a slick and efficient welcome and are able to get stuck straight into the work that they have been hired to do.
Preparing for automation
When you’ve decided that automating human resources is an essential next step for your company and you have identified the areas that will most benefit from it, the next steps are to make sure the software you are choosing is the right one for you, so here are some factors to consider:
- How easy will it be to integrate into existing structure and systems?
- How user-friendly is it?
- How secure is it?
- Does it meet regulatory requirements and those of funders, partners, etc?
- How auditable is it?
These are the basic questions about the software, but like with any major change in your business and the way it operates, you need to have a good change management strategy in place to shepherd your staff through the new landscape. First on the list needs to be an awareness of what impact this automation will have on staff and a plan for how best to communicate this in a positive way. We’ve already mentioned some benefits that could be used in this.
Overall, these benefits outweigh any possible risks associated with automating human resources, and as long as the changes are implemented in a sensible and strategic way, your business and the people within it will quickly start to notice all of the ways that automation is enabling them to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.
A Nice & innovative idea for human resource. I’m sure in future every business organization having such kind of automated management. Thanks for sharing in detail, as this is really very informative.