HR Automation Demystified
By Nathan Weill · November 27, 2022
Repetitive processes in business are steadily shifting to digital automation, using a variety of software tools and apps. As one of the most sensitive and complex departments of a company, improving HR automations upgrade the work experience of employees across the entire organization.
Benefits of Automating Human Resources
Is your team spending an awful lot of time completing tasks, reviewing and fixing errors, then repeating the same process over and over again?
Many human resources tasks are extremely tedious and often result in lots of human error and miscommunication. Some examples include:
- Reviewing a stack of applicants’ resumes
- Overseeing the detailed paperwork, setup, and training of new employees
- Handling employee compensation, leave/benefits, and periodic performance reviews.
Having the right HR workflow automations in place, will enable you to be creating a process, automating the process, and then sitting back while the process repeats itself.
HR Automation Examples
The HR department handles many very important – and also extremely sensitive – company processes and responsibilities. Typically, they oversee employee hiring, onboarding, payroll, leave and benefits, offboarding, as well as overall team training and improvement.
Here are a few examples of how to automate HR processes.
Employee Onboarding
The Process: The resumes were meticulously reviewed, and a few candidates were interviewed. The upper management met to discuss the possibilities, and then the decision to hire John Smith as part of the customer support team at ABC Technologies was made final.
In order for John to begin helping his teammates assist customers, here’s what an HR representative must do:
- Ensure the stack of forms including employee’s personal information, company policies, and compensation and benefits package details is completed, reviewed, and signed
- Scan and file the documents securely
- Conduct a background check based on John’s personal information
- Create a new employee record in the company database
- Purchase new hardware and software, or update the existing equipment for the new employee
- Set up secure access to applicable company programs, software, and apps
The Automated Way: Using secure HR automation tools designed for automatic onboarding, welcoming John Smith to ABC Technologies could be as simple as creating an employee profile and clicking to begin the hiring process.
Having an automated onboarding process in place can also help guarantee that John Smith stays with ABC Technologies. In fact, 93% of new employee hires said that having a strong onboarding process, such as an automated system, determines whether they would stay at a company.
The system can be programmed to automatically:
- Electronically send and collect verification documents and forms for information and signatures
- Securely file the paperwork in the appropriate database folders
- Forward all pre-first-day job information kits to the hire when triggered by a contract signature execution
- Order new equipment necessary for an employee’s position
- Submit IT setup requests for software setup and employee access
Payroll, Time Tracking, and Employee Leave
The Process: To calculate the bi-weekly payroll check amounts for each of the 16 workers employed at a dry cleaning company, the HR employee tasked with managing payroll must:
- Collect timesheets from employees to record hours total per worker, as well as overtime hours invested during this payroll period
- Use multiple spreadsheets to calculate payroll amounts based on hours worked, agreed upon wage, and referral incentives
- Confirm the available sick, vacation, or holiday days for employees who are out on leave
- Enter these amounts in the company’s accounting software
- Print a check for the payroll amount and prepare the envelopes for distribution
The Automated Way: Using secure HR workflow automation tools designed for payroll automation, payroll can become a series of simple steps. According to the American Payroll Association, this can help to reduce payroll processing costs by 80%. Payroll automation will also minimize the risk of errors in the spreadsheets causing inaccurate paycheck amounts.
Automatic HR processes for payroll will:
- Calculate payroll amounts based on employee clock-in and clock-out times, plus record of earned incentives, when applicable
- Allow employees to choose whether available vacation, sick, or holiday days should be applied to their paycheck when on leave
- Offer simplified payment methods such as direct deposit and automatic payroll transfers to employees
Employee Offboarding
The Process: When an employee chooses to move on from a company, there is more than a good-bye to be said and done.
- Does the employee have any date overlap with the new hire, so they can assist in job training and giving over tips?
- Does the employee have any company hardware (such as computers, tablets, phones) in his/her possession?
- Is the employee signed in to any cloud-based company software?
- Does the employee want to be provided with a recommendation letter for his/her future place of employment?
- Can collecting employee feedback at an exit interview or written questionnaire be helpful for the company’s continued improvement?
The Automated Way: With human resources automation software, the offboarding tasks can be set to follow a predetermined process without missing any steps. As soon as notice of termination is received, the system will automatically assign tasks to the correct HR team members so nothing is overlooked.
In addition:
- Offboarding surveys can automatically be sent to the terminating employee a specific number of days before or after leaving the company
- The employee’s user ID can automatically be locked out of all company programs as of the employment end date
- The system can locate company hardware in the employee’s possession, and an automatic request for the specific hardware, can be sent to the employee when the date of termination approaches
- Recommendation letters can be requested by the employee and approved by the HR representative using a template, with no repetitive work involved.
HR Process Automation Challenges
Despite the obvious benefits of HR automation – improved workflow, significant cost savings, and increased earning potential – change will always be a hurdle. And, change often breeds resistance.
Typical resistance to introducing HR workflow automation includes:
- Existing employees who have to re-learn the way they do things, and are sometimes fearful of computers replacing them
- Department managers who may like the way things are currently set up and resent the rigidity of processes
- Employees who are not tech savvy, and must now learn how to utilize the new HR automation software efficiently in order to be able to continue doing their daily tasks.
Dealing with Resistance to Implementing HR Automation
Overcoming employee resistance to change is vital in ensuring a company is successful in instituting new processes and gains the full HR automation benefits.
Here are a number of suggestions for how to automate HR processes with minimal employee resistance:
- Really, truly listen to employees and leaders, so the automations can work for them as much as possible. When building out a way to automate the offboarding process, for example, speak to the employee handling that process and make sure the HR automations you are building out do not conflict with their workflow. This may mean that personal information is not required to process the original candidate’s intake form, as this data is usually already collected in person at the interview.
- Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Instead of informing everyone involved about upcoming changes to the way their daily tasks are executed, discuss the exact whys, hows and whens of the HR automation strategy. Knowing the full picture and being kept in the loop tames the irritation of changes to a familiar routine.
- Buy into the cooperation of the HR department heads and senior employees as much as possible, for two reasons. Firstly, this will greatly impact the cooperation of the team they lead or influence. Also, they know their team and the why of how they currently do things. If they feel a specific HR workflow automation will not work well, it is usually worth trusting their opinions.
Of course, being compassionate and really understanding that change is difficult for most people goes a long way to making the adjustment easier for everyone involved.
Technical Challenges to Automating Human Resources
In addition to overcoming possible resistance to change by employees, there are a number of potential technical difficulties you need to be aware of when implementing HR workflow automation.
- Integrating new software tools with existing programs and processes
Since HR automation software is built out specifically for its’ tasks, it can be a challenge to have it work hand in hand with general company workflow tools. - Ensuring the continued security and privacy of data
As personal and private information is collected by the HR department when onboarding, preparing payroll, or offboarding employees, care must be taken when sharing or storing this data with external programs. - Automating only the tasks that do not need personal communication or human intellect
Human intelligence – especially in relation to many HR responsibilities which require analytical thinking skills – cannot be undermined. There is no automatic way to effectively interview a potential client, nor can current employees’ performance levels be analyzed and their teamwork morale and communications worked improved by a computer system. Therefore, workflow processes need to be carefully evaluated to decide which parts of the process to use HR automation tools for.
Need Help Automating Human Resource Processes?
The array of HR automation tools is no less colorful – and dizzying – than the colorful selection of candy in the supermarket. But thankfully, there are certified automation specialists who are here to do the work for you. Here at Flow Digital, we work with a variety of HR automation tools so that we can tailor the automation process according to your business’s specific requirements.
Want to benefit from automating your HR tasks, but unsure which tools to utilize and where to start?
With too many HR automations implemented to count – and thousands of hours saved for clients across most industries – you can trust Flow Digital to reinvent your HR department, too.
Ready to reinvent your HR department?
We help HR teams automate onboarding, payroll, offboarding, and everything in between — so your staff can spend their time building a happy team, not fighting spreadsheets.
Nathan Weill
Certified Zapier expert, premier Pipedrive partner and self-professed tech geek. Nathan has over a decade of experience helping hundreds of companies optimize their workflows, streamline processes and eliminate time-consuming tasks. Founder of Flow Digital, Nathan enjoys harnessing the power of automation to save businesses time and money.
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