Embracing Automation In HR Departments To Harness Uniquely Human Skills

Automating HR departments elevates employees’ value-add to companies and overall engagement

It’s no secret that over the course of the past year and a half, HR departments have undergone dramatic shifts amidst the backdrop of a global pandemic. As companies navigate new operational norms and continue to transform in the digital age, the need for HR’s expertise and leadership has never been greater.

Historically, many people have viewed HR departments as being responsible for the administrative and manual functions of a company like payroll, recruitment, benefits, and office management, however, this view is at odds with the needs of our ever-evolving digital and people-centric workforce. As we move towards a digital-first future, many HR departments will harness the power of artificial intelligence to automate everyday HR operations with the highest accuracy and speed and transform the employee experience.

In a competitive global market where top talent is limited, HR teams now need to radically change the way they work to create the best possible employee experience. Understanding and improving the employee experience is critical for companies operating in a highly competitive global economy. With this in mind, people-centric organizations are trending as the new norm. However, lengthy HR operations often leave little time for HR professionals to focus on the important ‘people’ aspect of their roles. With data analytics on their side, HR professionals are freed to focus on why they entered the field in the first place, people, and to excel at their skills irreplaceable by technology: creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration.

Liberating and enabling people through digital workers to do the purposeful work they want to do immediately uplifts the entire team and works toward bettering the broader employee experience. Continuously, this is tied directly to the customer experience where automation relieves the weight of process for process sake. As an end-to-end solution, it streamlines onboardings, facilitates real-time responses to benefit queries, automates the documentation, and ultimately eliminates the heaviness of paper often swirling around an HR department.

Automation puts companies in a position to invest in their people and upskill in a meaningful, sustainable way. By combining digital workers with existing staff, organizations curate a meaningful and purpose-driven work experience from start to finish. In fact, one of the largest banks in Argentina, Banco Santander, recently leveraged digital workers to automate, streamline, and reduce the duration of their onboarding hiring processes significantly thereby improving their employee experience, customer satisfaction, and NPS.

Clearly, newfound fulfillment made possible by automation trickles into the overall success of an enterprise by jumpstarting substantive discussions surrounding workplace design, organizational strategy, as well as human capital planning. With a distinct focus on employee wellness, digital workers manifest an environment where people are nurtured and able to thrive to their fullest potential. Not to mention, with departments becoming more efficient, companies save significant time and money and reinstate people as their greatest asset.

Looking at the big picture, embarking on the automation of HR departments is just one of many areas to consider for a broader strategic play that streamlines core business processes to add value, efficiencies, and scale enterprise-wide. The beauty of deploying digital workers at a large is being able to implement them across an entire organization.

Undoubtedly, the future of work is human and digital workers side by side, and businesses now have a unique opportunity to reimagine their operations in the age of innovation. Blending automation within the foundation of their HR departments elevates an employees’ value-add to the company as well as their own job satisfaction. It enables team members to thrive and focus on meaningful and strategic work. In the age of cutting-edge technology, we are in the beginnings of a transformational journey where organizations can showcase and embrace a true partnership between the human and digital worker with a view to improving and uplifting the way we all work.

With 65% of workers feeling optimistic, excited and grateful about having robot co-workers, global research shows that AI is changing the relationship between people and technology at work for the better. As businesses and organizations around the world have reenvisioned and reinvented the future of work, AI has been at the heart of digital transformation across every enterprise to optimize processes and identify efficiencies to give people time back and uplift the overall employee experience. With digital workers deployed, Human Resources professionals can hone in on their uniquely human skills - after all, ‘human’ is in the job title.