What is HR automation?

Traditional HR operations like recruiting, onboarding, and payroll management are being transformed by emerging HR automation strategies. Organizations that have even marginally brought in automation in HR functions are seeing an increase in not just their productivity levels, but also the impact they have on the overall business resources like increased engagement.

In the absence of HR process automation, simple onboarding functions like enrolling new employees, coordinating between departments, and offering employees access to all necessary platforms prove to be a mammoth challenge, even for the most defined HR teams and organizations. Tasks might get delayed and conflicts can occur without good integration and communication between HR and IT teams. A robust HR workflow automation is required to carry out all of this transformation. 

HR process automation is the automation of operations such as onboarding, induction, training, invoicing, engagement, synchronization, and benefits management. The automation of such processes enables HR teams to enhance their efficiency and productivity. It allows HRs to boost their effectiveness. But more importantly, it helps HRs free up time for more complex duties like brainstorming, decision-making, and building interpersonal relationships with employees. 

HR automation best practices

1. Start small and iterate using agile concepts

Begin with implementing and testing an individual business unit and procedure and then expand and modernize the remaining HR operations. Start with some processes to figure out where the inefficiencies are and what might be automated to ease those trouble spots.

2. Keep focussing on increasing data security

HR documents and records are often confidential and critical to the success of your company. You might be obligated to save documentation from months or even decades earlier, and you’ll need it for inspections or future reference. So much of this data is recorded on one network in many outdated HR systems, and if that infrastructure fails, your data could be lost permanently. 

When you employ an HR process automation tool that uses cloud services, your information will be stored securely. It’ll keep you safe even if there’s a crash, a power surge, a natural catastrophe, or whatever using cloud technologies. 

Alternatively, when you don’t have such a robust system, you will need an IT infrastructure to keep your documents safe. This is not only an expensive alternative but is also prone to loopholes.

3. Spend your time researching to effectively apply the software

Implementing an HR automation strategy can dramatically disrupt your HR department if the automation tool isn’t a great fit. This can cause people to lose faith in technologies that can help them with these time-consuming chores. While learning and adapting may take a bit of time at first, try to get it right before you seek alternatives. 

Allow instructional videos, films, or business experts to lead you and your employees through the process. When your HR management is running normally and you have more time to build your organization, you’ll be glad you didn’t want to rush the procedure.

Also, look into how similar organizations leverage HR process automation. Doing this analysis also helps to see use cases and benefits in real-time before implementing any changes.

4. Test out initiatives first 

So, you’ve chosen the one simple task you’d like to automate first. Now, it’s better to dive into action. Should you invest in the extra effort to make sure the policy changes program is flawless before introducing it to staff members? 

Not really, since perfecting a new program or procedure without testing it on the employees who would use it every day is not feasible in the long run. 

That’s why it is important to make sure you roll out HR workflow automation initiatives in small, executable, understandable, and measurable stages. 

5. Promote employee expertise

At this stage, it is important to also take note of your employee’s expertise. This includes how comfortable they are using digital tools and automation solutions, or getting to learning using the platform. Your employee expertise also has an impact on how effectively you’re able to employ HR automation and its effectiveness across all functions.

6. Continuously tweak workflows for an optimized approval process

Authorization barriers can restrict employees from contributing to their maximum capabilities in roles. The traditional back and forth of emails to submit requests, get clearances, and eventually get access to information, tools, etc, can take anywhere between a few days to weeks or even months; with instances wherein the conversation falls off midway, not getting bumped up unless the requirement arises again. 

With the help of HR automation, you can create approval workflows across all functions and teams. This way the entire process is streamlined, removing permission hurdles by automating repetitive tasks such as request submission or even the parameters based on which approval is made.  

7. Take advantage of ITSM to help your HR department

The concept that IT should be supplied as a commodity is at the heart of ITSM. This strategy can be quite beneficial to HR departments. HR, on the other hand, cannot just cut and paste what the IT department has accomplished. 

IT can better determine which procedures should be computerized and automated to increase the HR squad’s effectiveness.

8. Actively monitor your automation 

It’s important to note that building an HR automation strategy is a continuous process, not a one-time task. So, you’ll have to constantly watch the performance of HR automation and reflect on the questions and complaints that workers have that are rendering their journey difficult. 

These conversations need to be around analytics and how they are proving to be beneficial for the company; whether the centralized dashboard is making it easy for personnel to manage the automation, and any technical difficulties that are occurring need to be addressed.

9. Humanizing the Workplace

Every company has a unique workforce, so you can’t treat all employees and managers the same. But that doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel every time you have to deal with an employee issue. This is where automation in HR comes in handy. 

They can help automate certain HR processes, but ensure there is a clear handoff between a virtual assistant and actual human resources so that a human can step in when a complex request arises. At the same time, you should focus on leveraging AI-based technologies, so that the automation isn’t perceived as mechanical. Instead, it appears more human and contextual.

10. Remember to consider employee offboarding

Offboarding is a complicated subject for HR teams, whether an individual is departing voluntarily or not. There is a lot of repetition, like contacting the team, gathering corporate property, and adhering to legal requirements- all in a short amount of time. 

Continued access to critical company data and clumsy offboarding expose a corporation to needless danger. Thus, offboarding should be simplified using HR automation software that streamlines the entire process, completing each of the tasks and compliances strategically.