5 ways to use automation to transform HR in your organization

How would you feel about freeing up 30% of your team’s time?

It’s a no-brainer. Of course, you’d jump at it. However, are you already wondering what you’d have to sacrifice to do so?

The answer is nothing. In fact, it’s the opposite. You can improve all those things at the same time – all thanks to automation.

Automating processes and administrative tasks means you reclaim the precious all-important time you need.

It’s how progressive, fast-growth People Companies are getting ahead.

They’re automating transactional processes, freeing up lost time on admin and leaving their leader free to truly focus on what matters: their people and building great workforce experiences for them.

People Companies are using automation to get ahead

People Companies have woken up to the fact that HR is changing. The global skills crisis has led to the war for talent. Employee engagement levels have plummeted. As a result, productivity is at an all-time low.

People Companies know that in order to win in the war for talent, things need to change.

Their HR leaders know that they need to move away from being a transactional team, towards a more strategic people-focused function.

By automating transactional processes, People Companies get quicker feedback and take remedial action. By continually redesigning better ways of working in this iterative manner, People Companies see a quicker impact on engagement and productivity.

Automated HR processes also free up time for employees. People Companies give their employees autonomy to do things themselves, such as managing their teams, setting objectives or booking time off, which also takes the pressure off HR and People team’s time, too.

Why automate?

Our research has shown that 80% of fast-growth companies have embraced HR automation, versus 53% in lower growth businesses.

McKinsey estimates that 60% of all occupations have 30% of activities that could be automated, and that automation can make workforces 31% more productive.

Yet, that’s just the efficiency gain.

We believe the game-changing potential is in the time you free up when you automate. What would you do with it to make a real impact on business performance and success?

Here are five ways to use automation to transform HR in your organization, enabling you to become a more people-focused function.

1. Great onboarding experiences

Start out as you mean to go on and show your employees you take engagement and experience seriously at every touchpoint and stage of their career with you.

Automation means you can deliver relevant, timely and personalized information so your new hires can hit the ground running, already feeling and acting as part of the team and business.

You can streamline the recruitment process with forms, checklists and self-service admin that make it easy for candidates and recruits to get on board and give you the information you need to enroll, induct and equip them.

2. An engaged and motivated workforce

You get the best work from your people when they feel motivated and valued.

Automation means you can tailor and target communications and gather meaningful feedback in ways that suit your workforce.

Give them the power to access self-serve with HR portals and online information. Put these in their pockets through secure, always-on mobile apps.

Create seamless processes for peer feedback and recognition so outperformance is always recorded and rewarded.

3. Flexible performance management

The annual review process is obsolete: it’s inflexible, slow and time-consuming.

Continuous performance conversations keep employees engaged and feeling valued, all while helping to sustain performance and talent development throughout the year.

Automation means you can prompt, capture and collate feedback and performance information from peers and line or task managers.

You can see accurate, timely and meaningful performance information in management dashboards and use it to identify key talent to nurture as well as performance and development opportunities to address.

4. Empower employees through self-service

In life, we’re used to self-service everywhere – from flight check-ins to supermarket scanning. Employees expect the same in the modern workplace.

Intuitive, automated systems cut out the frustration of traditional HR admin.

Employees can view and update personal and pay information and leave requests, find information, policies and contact details easily and gain approval for routine requests instantly.

They get convenient, anytime access and response. Your team loses a burdensome set of mundane admin tasks.

5. Provide more actionable insights

Automation marshals your data like never before, giving you accurate and accessible people information that influences business decision-making.

Know where your talent is, spot risk factors for resignations and under-performance so you can act early to maintain excellent experiences and high retention.

Review and explore data dashboards that show exceptions and trends clearly, with meaningful data visualization tools.

Feed relevant and trusted HR information to the board and managers to help them deliver performance and strategy.

HR transformation depends on automation

In a tougher, more complex, faster-changing, always-on marketplace, you can’t risk delays and inaccuracies in routine processing.

You can’t afford the time for it when you need your People team to focus on adding real business value instead.

You need to act decisively and adopt automation now if you want to accelerate your People performance ahead of your competitors.

That 30% extra time you free up from admin to spend on a more strategic people-focused approach could just be the critical differentiator for your organization this year.