How RPA Is Solving The Human Error Headache In HR

RPA has the potential to save time, reduce data loss, eradicate human error and save money

It’s something we’ve all been warned about; robots are coming to take our jobs. 

Well, not really, but they are able to make our jobs a whole lot easier. Robotics Process Automation, or RPA, helps businesses automate certain repetitive tasks – often those that workers aren’t particularly keen to do – via a ‘bot’ or software. Think about those simple, but time-consuming tasks you have to do on a daily basis, like data entry, generic follow-up emailing or SAP processes. Now imagine not having to do them at all. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

This can have a huge impact on a business’ bottom line, especially in an HR context. In short, RPA has the potential to save time, reduce data loss, eradicate human error and save money. 

But how does RPA achieve this? To understand, let’s look at the following – 

There’s an old joke in the tech business, ‘the problem usually exists between the keyboard and the chair’, and while it’s not particularly funny, it does ring true. Human error is responsible for more than 25 percent [1] of all data loss, and it’s not surprising. Unlike robots, humans are temperamental, we have feelings, needs, distractions and wants, and, when 10 to 20 percent of human work hours are spent on dull, repetitive tasks [2], these things routinely get in the way of our work, cause informational errors and cost businesses countless amounts of money per year. 

RPA eradicates human error by removing humans from the equation (almost) entirely, automating those time-consuming business tasks that humans find routine and repetitive. RPA can do it, and it can do it precisely.

HR workers tackle a huge amount of administrative duties on any given workday. In addition to recruiting, hiring, and providing counsel to employees, they also handle the nitty-gritty, data-entry-heavy tasks of maintaining employment records and process essential paperwork including timesheets, travel records, exit papers and job applications.

So, how exactly can RPA benefit HR departments? 

Robotics providers, such as the Reveal Group, often collaborate with Signavio, a BPM (business process management) provider to deploy full-service RPA programs. One client of Reveal Group, a multinational corporation and global leader in the resources and agricultural sectors, worked with Reveal Group with the aim of developing an RPA to automate the huge amount of manual daily tasks faced by their Procurement, HR and Payroll departments. These tasks were impacting daily operations significantly, and development efforts began with a focus on the employee exit process – in which a series of administrative checklists had to be completed in SAP, before sending out notifications to relevant departments and individuals. 

The scope of the RPA was to cover the bulk of this process, and required automation of SAP, Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and Internet Explorer, as well as Cherwell Service Management. At the conclusion of the project, the developed RPA was able to automate 90 percent of this process – which meant a 90 percent reduction of effort involved, and with each employee termination or exit - at a rate of roughly ten per week – taking up to 30 minutes, the workload for the HR department was decreased by approximately five hours per week.

This released department capacity allowed the existing staff to be deployed to higher-value tasks within the department, resulting in an increase in productivity and job satisfaction.

In the above example, we explored how RPA helped a multinational company save time by automating their employee exit process – but we didn’t look at the money it saved, nor whether additional staff would lose employment due to the automation. In fact, it was the opposite, one dedicated member of staff at the corporation was trained in the technology, and assumed responsibility for the automation, making them an invaluable asset to the company. From a financial perspective, approximately $400,000 was saved, with greater annual projections to come.

Once established, it’s almost a no-brainer that utilizing an RPA will save any business money – in fact, by 2025, it’s estimated that the potential savings companies will experience by implementing RPAs sit between $5 trillion to $7 trillion[3]. Combine that with the time and effort saved, and reduction in human error, and you’d be crazy to wait too long to start developing your own RPA’s.