Should You Automate Your Business HR Processes?

One of the biggest challenges as a startup business owner is finding good employees to work for you. Truth be told, finding and retaining quality workers is a challenge not just for small businesses, but also the biggest corporate houses in the country.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 2 million Americans voluntarily quit their organization in search of better jobs each month. Managing human resources is thus vital to the success of your business.

This puts human resource management in an interesting spot. In the past few years, organizations have heavily invested in automation to reduce overheads and improve efficiency. Given the trend, should businesses automate their hiring and HR processes as well? While this could make HR processes more efficient, this could also potentially take away the human element which has a significant bearing on the way your employees engage with your business.

The Two Sides of HR

There are two sides to human resource management. The HR manager in charge of engaging with job applicants, onboarding new recruits and handling retention constitute the front-end. This is a side to HRM that employees are exposed to and should ideally retain the ‘human touch.’

However, there are a lot of back-end processes in worker management that could be made more efficient with automation. This includes application processing, payroll processing and tax management—the automation of such processes makes the system more efficient and is something businesses must invest in.

Challenges with Front-End HRM

While the front-end component of human resources needs to retain the human element, there are a number of ways this could be made more efficient through technology and automation. Here are a few ways to do it:

Job application management. Applying for a job can be a painful process for candidates. This process can be made easy for applicants by automating the process of resume creation. Such automation tools allow candidates to generate a resume directly by logging into their LinkedIn profile. This is an example of automation that makes your job applicant’s life easier and makes them more interested in your organization.

Onboarding. Businesses have traditionally relied on classroom-based training programs to bring new employees onboard. Not only does this consume a lot of employee man-hours, it is also an inefficient way to impart real-time training to employees. A lot of organizations today rely on learning management systems for their onboarding processes. LMS tools allow organizations to create high quality training programs that can then be used to onboard new recruits.

Unlike classroom training, LMS requires a one-time setup and can be used to train any number of new recruits. Also, it lets every employee learn at his or her own pace and is consequently popular among learners.

Retention management. Employees quit their organization for a multitude of reasons ranging from low pay to lack of morale, respect or vision. Most importantly, employees feel the need to be constantly challenged and a mundane job often repels the highest percentage of workers away.

Automation in work process could help employees do away with boring, repeat activities like drafting performance reports or scheduling worker slots and thus improve the quality of the work being performed. Technology can also be deployed to automate pay rises and in monitoring feedback. Such processes make an organization more efficient and offer an opportunity for employees to love their work.

Automation has never been the answer to any work issue. However, with automation, processes become more efficient and this has a direct influence on a business’ bottom line.

Investing in HR automation can help organizations build a more efficient system which improves the quality of work and reduces issues that workers in your organization face.