Kicking Off Enterprise Automation With HR

Here’s how to make the HR function more efficient and effective

As companies continue to evolve their digital transformation strategies, adopting business process automation or artificial intelligence-driven data flows is no longer a question of why or how - it has become a question of when and where. Recent research found that more than 80% of employees believe AI and automated tools can improve their productivity and performance, so it’s safe to say that the historical employee roadblocks to automation adoption are fading away, if not already completely eliminated.

In addition to changes in employee sentiment, the global job market has abruptly changed as well. Companies are having a hard time finding talent to fill open positions - which gives companies the dual task of retaining the experienced employees they have, while making open positions look more attractive to potential candidates, given the intense competition for talent.
 

Embracing enterprise automation is the key to lightening the load for these employees, and to making positions more attractive and fulfilling for individuals. Enterprise automation can eliminate mundane, repeatable tasks across an organization and ensure that your talent pool uses their best, higher-valued skills quickly and efficiently, and are not bogged down.

Where to start with enterprise automation, however, may be a question.

As companies look to take the first real steps toward incorporating enterprise automation into their workflows, the one business unit that should be at the top of their list is HR.

Automating HR

HR is an ideal starting point for enterprise automation. Most companies’ HR departments have become a collection of new and old technologies, with a variety of data and information spread out across different applications and processes - processes that, in some cases, are still very manual. 

Some of these functions include employee onboarding, recruiting, talent management, performance reviews, payroll, and offboarding. In the past, as companies grew and their employees’ needs grew with them, there was little planning done about whether the function should be given to HR, or how it should be handled - anything that didn’t fit another category or role simply became an issue for HR to solve.

Because of this, HR is ripe for some reorganization - and automation is just the tool to use to help make the HR function more efficient and effective.

Key Functions to Address

Somewhere within the walls of most enterprises, there are manual and repetitive business processes that would be better served with an enterprise automation solution. Within HR functions, for example, there are several of these which can eat up a key employee’s time, meaning they quickly tire of the role, and that your company is not getting access to their best talents because they rarely have time to use them. This is why automation can be such a benefit.

Automation can free current employees’ time by taking on these repetitive tasks, allowing them to tackle bigger, more strategic company issues. Applying enterprise automation and intelligent integration to HR processes can improve the integration of different functions within HR as well, helping information and data to be updated and shared. Workflows and job descriptions become more focused (and based on reality), improving HR’s ability to help be a driver of the overall company’s success.

With HR firmly planted at the top of your automation list, the next question becomes where in the department to kick things off?

Onboarding Employees - Onboarding is a time-intensive process that can be frustrating for HR executives to handle. Automation can change that forever. As new employees join the company, there is a bevy of forms to read and sign, documents that need to be filled out, and systems that have to be set up, such as payroll, healthcare, retirement fund enrollment, laptop, and mobile device allotment and more. Each new employee requires hours of effort on the part of the HR manager and the employee just to get them ready to work.

Automation can ensure that the correct forms are delivered to the new employee, in the correct order and at the right time, and in such a way that’s not overwhelming. Automation can cut down on the potential for human error, for an important signature to be missed, or for critical information to be left out. This helps speed time-to-value, while also cutting back on the repetitive work an HR manager needs to do.

Self-service applications can also be rolled out, giving new employees the power to access additional information as they need it or to directly find answers to questions about the process, without taking up more of the HR teams’ time.

People Analytics - Employee information is often spread out across numerous programs and applications, quickly destroying any chance at efficiency and accuracy. Integrating data and automating access gives companies the opportunity to rectify this situation, clean their datasets, and locate everything in one easy-to-access system, such as a cloud data warehouse, like those offered by Amazon, Google, Microsoft Azure, or Snowflake. This makes the data easy to analyze and enables your company to automate how the data is added to the database or data warehouse, and how it informs decision making. Enterprise automation, with intelligent integration, can also help build privacy and security protections for personal employee data.

Talent Management - Employee talent management often includes annual reviews, salary changes, training for a new role, performance warnings, and firings within its responsibilities. Many of these tasks are repeatable and can become more efficient with the application of automation. Imagine annual review forms and reminders being sent out automatically. Promotions and salary changes being automatically delivered to finance and payroll. Automation can even be used to track signs of employee dissatisfaction or negativity, alerting HR team members of a potential issue before it’s too late. 

Taking repeatable, time-consuming tasks out of the hands of HR executives frees them up to spend time on more valuable tasks, such as recruiting and retention programs.

Time and Leave Management - HR automation can help create an easy-to-use vacation and maternity/paternity leave system for both employees and HR staff. Combining self-service with back-end automation to review and compare requests against policies, amount of time taken, and other scheduled leave time can save HR and finance teams a great deal of time and effort. It can also facilitate quicker response time for employees, letting them make plans or find a better time period to request. 

Leave management automation can be a huge benefit to industries that rely on shift work, such as healthcare, manufacturing and transportation.

Employee Offboarding - The process of offboarding an employee incorporates far more than just taking a key fob and shaking their hands. In many companies, HR has become responsible for collecting feedback and handing out the last paycheck, but also for shutting off network access, collecting equipment, changing passwords, and ensuring company materials are returned. With the incorporation of enterprise automation into the offboarding workflow, many of these processes become automatic. Access can be deleted, codes changed, reminders issued, and surveys sent out to collect feedback. 

Automation can also assist in making sure that feedback is shared with the HR team to be learned from, rather than simply forgotten when the handshake is done.

The Right Place to Begin

For years, many HR departments have been a catch-all of employee-related responsibilities with no forethought into whether the work was strategic or helped drive the company’s success. By embracing enterprise automation and intelligent integration to streamline workflows and improve efficiency, HR can become the shining example of applying team members’ best talents to solving the most critical problems. A successful, highly efficient, and effective HR department will become the place prospective employees want to be for years to come.

Michael Nixon is the Vice President at SnapLogic. Prior to SnapLogic, Michael was senior director of product marketing and competitive intelligence for Snowflake over a number of years.  Connect Michael Nixon