How To Deliver an Outstanding HR Support: Top 10 Automation Ideas

How easy has automation made living life for you? How do you feel each time you’re able to order pizza online from the comfort of your room? Or ask Alexa to play you a song? How good does it feel knowing you can lock, unlock and start your car on your phone?

Automation makes the world go round, like on a rollercoaster at a park, but with less stress, less effort, and maximum productivity.

Here’s the thing, whether we like it or not, humans are prone to errors and, more so, likely to overlook these errors, something an automated system will identify in no time.

That’s right, it’s an automation software, and one thing they never do is change patterns. 

Automation software will go round and round, taking care of repetitive processes that could become overwhelming for a worker bent over spreadsheets every day.

And here’s what happens when you have to carry out a repetitive task over a long period, you lose it.

When that happens, it’s only a matter of time until a misstep that could cost your business happens. However, even if you have or belong to the most meticulous HR team, which is not impossible, many successful business organizations today hang on to timely operations.

You don’t want to be left behind.

Let’s face it, managing people, even those trained for the job, comes with a lot of stress. But the HR department remains the only link between the employers and employees; they are the glue that holds your teams together and requires meticulous operations.

However, in today’s corporate world, many things have been made accessible through technology, and the Human resource team isn’t left out.

This blog post will look at ten HR tasks that you can and should automate using HR Software. These tasks add unnecessary stress to your life and, when completed manually, can lead to errors, compliance issues, and data loss. In fact, two-thirds of all current jobs can now have a third of their tasks automated.

You can use technology to improve HR operations by streamlining processes, enabling remote work, and automating workflows.

Businesses have been investing in SaaS systems over the years to help them make hires, manage teams, run payrolls, receive employee requests, and so on, rapidly growing the HR automation industry.

HR teams are now in their best working positions; they get more work done in a short time and equip their business in other areas that need growth.

Here are some of the best automation ideas for providing excellent HR support and freeing up more time in your schedule to optimize your HR operations.

Top 10 HR Software Automation Ideas

Standardize Onboarding and Training Processes

Onboarding recruits into an organization is usually one of the most tedious Human resource processes for both on-boarders and recruits.

This is a good place for automation.

HR teams can create an automatic workflow to deliver critical information or new documents to new hires with an automation system.

In most cases, the new hires must go through their documentation and details collection and the training resources they need to settle comfortably into their new working environment and roles. 

According to 13% of HR professionals, the inability to integrate onboarding automation into their processes has a negative impact on new employee training. Breezy has over 800 HR and recruitment templates you can model after your recruitment processes.

Some companies use Slack to create a dedicated onboarding bot to introduce new employees and pass over important training documents.

It starts with understanding your critical processes, as it does with many HR automation ideas on this list. List the steps you take to onboard each new employee, standardize as much as possible while keeping it personalized, and look for ways to streamline or automate the process.

Timesheets and Approval Automation

If your company requires employees to submit timesheets, this is the first thing you should automate. For approval documentation, one-time emails are insufficient, and the process is slow, inefficient, prone to errors, and difficult to track.

Sage HR and ADP Workforce Now are two good examples. When possible, get time tracking software that can integrate with your other vital apps — it’s a great way to save time.

There are numerous time-tracking tools available to assist you in quickly approving data in the correct format and minimizing the amount of time spent chasing missing or incorrect data.

Automate Employee Data Collection Across All Systems

You can use a self-service employee portal to request a change of address or any other update from an employee.

The portal can then push the data to any other systems you want to connect to the portal. 

You only get to enter information once this way, and administrative errors are avoided.

Performance Appraisals/Reviews

With automation on the HR software, you can replace paper-based tools and word documents with automated review performance processes that include necessary approval and review touchpoints.

Maintain consistency throughout the organization and provide employees with information about where they are in the process and what comes next.

Secure Employee Privacy

HR managers are in charge of sensitive information about other people, from medical records to background and paychecks, social security numbers, addresses, and additional information that everyone should not view.

Employees entrust you with their personal information, and you must treat that information responsibly.

HR document management software lets you specify who can view which types of documents and even redact information that should be kept private. With these safeguards, you can be confident that your HR department is HIPAA compliant.

Travel and Leave Requests

HR software solutions will let you set up a process that will provide your employees with a single form. With it, you can collect approvals and send information where they need to go, whether to an individual or record system, instead of a tiring series of back-forth emails between the concerned parties.

Set up a workflow within your organization’s Automation platform for a more consistent PTO request process, starting with a customized form employees fill out whenever they need time off.

The system then checks their available PTO and sends the request to the appropriate manager for approval or denial. Both parties get reminders when the PTO date arrives, and payroll is automatically informed of the difference in hours and pay codes.

Employee Status Change

Since working involves the development and career improvement, no employee will remain at a point forever; there is bound to be a status change. So, how do you effect that?

• Make it simple for managers to update the status of their employees—route changes to the appropriate approvers and payroll for processing.
• Get rid of “surprise promotions” and make sure everyone is updated.
• Access rights on the software ensure that only those who need to know about the process do.

Streamline Payroll

Payroll is another time-consuming task for HR departments. Payroll automation is now more possible than ever, thanks to HR automation. For instance, the BambooHR and Paylocity solutions will let you automate payroll, taxes, and filings.

You can also integrate it with time tracking apps, business operations tools, and expense management to assist you in streamlining processes across your HR tech stack.

Benefits Selection and Eligibility

There is also the Open Enrollment period when every employee in your company must evaluate their benefits and make necessary changes.

As if understanding the benefits isn’t hard enough, you also have to deal with the paperwork and data entry that comes with making changes. You’re left burning the midnight oil trying to meet your deadlines when employees wait until the last minute or even later (as they frequently do).

Employees can use an automated benefits process to access a self-service portal and make their own choices. Since the process is electronic, you won’t have to enter the data into another system, especially if you integrate the portal with any HR software you already use.

In addition, if your company provides benefits based on specific criteria, you can use automation to send out notifications when the conditions are met—for example, increasing an employee’s vacation leave after a year of service or providing stock options to top performers.

When it’s time for performance reviews or salary increases for individual team members, you can send similar notifications to your HR team and management.

Data Backup

What happens if a natural disaster hits your city and you keep all of your records in an on-site file room? Do you have a plan for disaster recovery in place?

Here’s how disaster recovery works in conjunction with an HR document management system: 

Your electronic documents go to the cloud, which means they are kept in a secure off-site facility. Your files and data will be safe even if disaster strikes your area. Once your team has reached a safe location, they will be able to access those documents from any location with an internet connection and resume normal operations.

In Conclusion

The above tasks and more are enough to propel you to invest in automation software for HR activities. 

After you’ve set up the hiring process, each step is delivered to your work queue for you to complete. Tasks that are tedious and repetitive are completed for you, leaving you to focus on tasks that require human intervention. The best applications may even route documents to others for review automatically. 

Additionally, applicants can be sent custom automated emails at each stage of the process, depending on whether they will proceed to the next step or not.

There’s a lot involved in HR processes, including compliance, visibility, audibility, security, and consistency. Automating these processes will save you time and increase your productivity in the long run.