8 HR Processes You Need to Automate ASAP

Automation is the talk of the town in HR departments across the world. Human resources is one of those industries that constantly bogs down personnel with mundane tasks.

So it makes sense for HR departments to transform their processes and systems into automated ones. However, there are still some that aren’t quite there yet.

You have 45% of companies still trying to implement automation for basic processes. And only about 40% of companies are using cloud HCM solutions.

You’ll also find that 72% of HR professionals say that the lack in automation prevents business success.

It appears most businesses are on the same page about the necessity of automation processes. However, implementing them is another story.

If your company is on the forefront of going automated, then you may wonder which processes to begin with.

So here are the top HR processes you should be automating in 2019.

1. The Recruitment Process

Finding new employees is essential as you grow or shift directions. But finding the best talent is another story.

In the past, HR professionals had to pull up their sleeves and get their hands dirty in the process of finding and hiring candidates. But what if there was a way to improve your recruiting and onboarding processes?

With automation tools, you can accumulate data that can help improve both of these areas. For example, you can gauge the recruitment success across all departments in your organization.

And the same can be done of the locations your company owns.

Knowing what works and what doesn’t can help trim the fat on time-sucking, low-yielding tasks. This can, in turn, help boost productivity in the HR department.

For example, automating the form signing process. You can implement the Xodo Sign platform to allow new hires to review digital documents and sign them electronically.

You can either do this via email or use the eSignature API to embed the forms into your own site to have them review, fill out, and sign. Either way, you can look at the Xodo Sign dashboard to review which candidates have completed their forms.

The same can be done for all of your onboarding needs. You can integrate digital documents and guides into workflows so new hires can learn your processes.

Some companies even create interactive guides to ensure new hires are digesting the content correctly. By ensuring the onboarding process goes smoothly, you can improve your employee retention and productivity rates.

2. Employee Record Keeping

There are plenty of files you have to keep on hand for all of the workers in the organization. This can quickly fill up numerous filing cabinets.

Not to mention, managing it all can be confusing and cumbersome to say the least. Trying to quickly find a file on an employee can take up time that could otherwise be spent on other important tasks.

By automating your employee records, you can make filing and finding data fast and easy.

One way to do this is to scan all of your paper documents into digital scans. You can do this on your own using a scanner device. Or you can hire professionals to do this for you.

Either way you go, be sure the digital scans are editable so you can make changes to them as needed.

This will help make the process of updating employee data seamless. Plus, it’ll reduce the odds of data loss and manual entry errors.

3. Conducting Performance Reviews

Rewarding your employees for their great work is key to boosting workplace morale and even productivity levels. But managers don’t always have the time to properly give performance appraisals to employees.

Automation can be used to ensure all employee performance levels are tracked. This includes monitoring their metrics, such as time it takes to complete assignments, how many revisions were required, and any notes given from the responsible project manager.

There are a host of metrics you can track that’s automatically updated so management can receive real-time updates on employee performance.

Then when it comes time to do evaluations, all of the data is right at your fingertips. Employees get accurate evaluations and ensures they get the recognition (and possibly raises and promotions) they deserve.

With a review system like this, you can help improve the engagement and productivity in your workplace.

4. Offboarding Old Employees

A lot of HR departments overlook the offboarding process as a necessary area to automate. Once you terminate an employee, there are documents that must be signed.

Like with the recruiting and onboarding, you can automate this as well. You can use Xodo Sign to embed or email the documents so they’re able to review and sign the paperwork.

There are other areas that must be automated and monitored as well. Such as the return of company devices and equipment. There are also updates that must be made to employee files to ensure they’re no longer on payroll or receiving benefits.

By automating and connecting these processes, you can make the offboarding process a breeze.

5. Tracking Schedules and Timesheets

If you have employees that work specific days and times based on their individual needs, then insert this data into your automation system so it auto-generates schedules.

Then you can easily update the data for each employee so no one’s scheduled to work on days or times they’re not available. Then these schedules can be made available to all workers using a special login.

This also ties together with holiday and leave requests. You can accept these digitally and then have them approved by management before inserting them into your scheduling tool.

With automation, the employee’s leave and holiday records are updated so it’s known how many paid days off are available.

As for your timesheets, all employees are automatically tracked based on when they clock in and out. The need to constantly review the timesheets for approval is eliminated.

This is because your scheduling system and timesheet system can compare data to automatically approve timesheets for payroll distribution. Of course, it’s still good for HR to monitor this to ensure flagged overtime hours are approved.

6. Expense Claims Management

Here’s another area that can be quite tedious to deal with. So it’s a good idea to have this process automated. In a manual process, you have to go through mounds of paperwork and excel spreadsheets.

The issue with this is all the time it takes to manage expenses and there’s the risk of inaccuracies. In many cases, it takes hours to go over it all, yet expenses can still be costly and dated.

In most scenarios, the expense claims begin with an employee completing an expense report using an Excel spreadsheet or document. This is then forwarded to the manager.

They review the expense claim and invoice and either approve them and send to accounting, or return it. Afterward, accounting personnel process the expenses into the business’s system before filing it.

Then rinse and repeat. In large companies, this can be a frustrating task to do over and over again.

Automation is the key to reducing stress and the chances of accounting mistakes.

7. Requests for Training

If your company offers training workshops, sessions, and courses, then it’s a good idea to automate the sign-up process. By automating this, you can allow employees to make and manage all of their training requests.

They can log into the HR system and apply for training courses that are available (until class size is reached). All you have to do is implement a workflow so employees receive details about the training automatically.

Then once they complete it, this record is added to their employee record automatically. This will come in handy when it comes time to evaluate employees for promotions. Seeing certain course completions will help managers find the best candidates for a promotion.

8. Safety Incidents

Whenever someone gets injured on the job, it needs to be accurately recorded. If you’re in an industry where this can happen often, then automation is definitely helpful.

These reports can be submitted by the employee using a digital form you send them to fill out and electronically sign. This is then filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and worker’s compensation systems, among others.

The incident report process is made fast and easy for everyone involved. The details of the report can be easily transferred from document to document and sent off to the proper agencies.

Automating Your HR Department

Is it time for you to get with the times and automate your HR processes? Surely, your human resource employees and managers will love you for doing so.

Automation is the future and any company that fails to properly automated their systems will be left in the dust. Don’t let this happen to you!

Get started finding ways to improve your HR department with software automation. Then come back and let us know what upgrades you made and how it’s improving productivity!