#22 HR 4.0 - Automation with Chatbots

Welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Yeah, last week we had a very interesting episode about the 5 most valuable use cases for chatbots within companies. And yeah, we had a lot of feedback from you. Thank you very much. And this is why we're doing a very focused episode on internal use cases, internal processes and use cases for chatbots. So yeah, so that's, that's what we do now. So we have capture the few, isn't it, Arno?

Yes, that's right, Sascha. And we decided to really focus on the internal use cases because of course there's external-facing use cases as well. And just briefly for the listeners, in case you missed our previous episode, internal use cases are generally a chatbot that's hosted within site your internal organization. And this is a chatbot that deals with, let's say, human resource queries or, you know, help desk queries for users. Perhaps there's a management chatbot that could, you know, help with your CapEx or your OpEx queries or approvals. Maybe there's a virtual assistant for your sales team. So these are all use cases for for internal chatbots that you deploy within such organization. And of course, there's external chatbots as well. And that's more, you know, for financial services, for example, when there's a loan request, or for healthcare where it's an online triage, for retail, you know, it might be product information. So I think, you know, from a classification perspective, that's kind of the two boxes we put in, or the chatbot categories in. So we're gonna focus today on the internal chatbots and where we see chatbot adoption for this internal use cases is specifically in HR. So, you know, one of the popular use cases we see is where employee has got an HR admin chatbot. Available to themselves. And, you know, this is all in the realm of self-service, and the employee, you know, might ask for, you know, specific certificates to be generated. So this could be, I don't know, a letter of employment, for example. You know, somebody opens a bank account and they need a letter of employment or employer reference. So these are good examples of where a chatbot can actually generate that certificate for that employee as a self-service, send them the PDF, no HR involvement whatsoever. Very, very good, very flexible, you know, excellent use case for, you know, for internal HR chatbot.

Yeah, I think that is, this is really a lot for the self-service, isn't it? Certificates is just one But I think a very, very common one I think is also, yeah, you get married, someone gets divorced, all these different things, circumstances are changing in lives and address changes, all these things you usually have to communicate to your HR department because your payslips and all that stuff need to be up to date with your address, etc. And Yeah, so this is where you could use the self-service chatbot as well. So to update your personal data, no new phone number, yes, you have next of kin is different. So there are so many different things which are usually flying around by email and then back and forth. It's not really the most efficient way. Chatbot can just take that and, yeah, and updates the relevant backend systems.

Yeah, exactly. And that's key, right? Because I think how many companies have have got different places, different areas where they save employee data. And this is key where if that personal data is updated using the chatbot interface, it is actually mirrored across all of the systems, you know, which obviously reduce multiple data entry into these various systems. So excellent use case. So the third one on our list is employee leave requests. So again, part of the self-service chatbot. Employee wants to go on holiday, paid time off, and they book their holiday request using the chatbot. And the chatbot will take care of when the holiday starts, when it ends, make sure the employee has got sufficient leave available to book the particular request. Part of the chatbot might actually engage the manager real time to say, you're happy for this person to take holiday? The manager might say, well, I will have to check my schedule, for example. I'll get back to you. Once the manager jumps on again, that conversation resumes until there's a conclusion. Very, very perfect use case for chatbot. You know, no emails flying around, no filling out of forms, just straight to the point.

Absolutely. So if you don't have that kind of system available yet, I thought some companies are still running some of these processes like the leave request still on Excel sometimes, and then that's PDFed and sent and scanned and submitted. So I think if you have a backend system with your HR records and you don't have a user interface yet, there's a really good chance for everyone who's looking to improve that specific self-service process to just get a chatbot in and get this stuff done. And then obviously it opens up opportunities far more than that. And I think one thing we probably should mention here as well, these self-service chatbots, they can be added into the intranet portal, or one of the most attractive ones recently is to really add these self-service chatbots into Slack or into MS Teams. So where your employees already add anyway quite a lot during the day, so you just go to a different channel and then start chatting with the self-service bot and all that stuff is sorted. So I think it couldn't be really easier. And you don't need to build these web applications anymore, isn't it? Because the chatbot can take care of those things.

Yeah, that's right. So yeah, that's, that's really, really interesting point. And, you know, if, if we look at the next one, which is timesheet management, and again, for timesheet management, you know, that's, that's the fourth use case in, in the self-service category, and that's all to do with your time reporting, timesheet submissions for each of the projects, the registration of that. We all dread filling out these timesheets, but if a chatbot has got access to obviously the project system, the Workday system, depending on what sort of backend system you use, very easy to enter your timesheets. And especially true for fee earners where fee earners are probably quite critical to enter their timesheets. So if there's a really, really easy communication channel or means to do so, then obviously their timesheets will be submitted timely, accurately, and there's less risk of obviously leakage with inside the business where perhaps their time is not billed against the project.

And I think that's the— I think this is very, very, very powerful, especially the reminding element. So the chatbot could really, in a normal way, start to get your staff to really fill out these timesheets very often. Yeah, this is very important for businesses, so the reminding part and just confirming. It's so easy, and we're all used to all this WhatsApp stuff, so it's very, very handy. Same with internal feedback conversations, so one-on-one reviews or general feedback on internal services. So all these, all these things can be captured with the self-service bot as well. So you don't need to have sort of Word documents people are filling in, then they will be sent back. I think that, that very often, yeah, just sits at the bottom of your to-do list to do because it's quite cumbersome. But yeah, doing that kind of stuff internally with the chatbot, yeah, I think you get far more interaction and engagement to do those kind of things.

Yeah, exactly. And this is all, you know, employee satisfaction and collecting feedback from employees, you know, and you know, it's a very good channel to do so. And then to take that feedback and obviously focus on HR-centric things like improving satisfaction rather than managing these forms to capture the satisfaction ratings, right? Another example in the self-service category for this internal HR bot is, of course, FAQ section. So this is all to do with internal business regulations and policies. You know, we've all seen a staff handbook. It's quite a a dreaded document and, you know, lots of pages on different things. So this is a very popular use case to take that employee handbook and really build a chatbot in front of it that's very interactive and can ask or answer, you know, these FAQs on particular business policies, which gets straight to the point. You know, again, high employee satisfaction, no HR involvement, you know, excellent use case for deployment of a chatbot for this particular use case.

Yeah, very good. Yeah, I think we have to do that as well internally. So now we're talking about this, I think it's fast to do the first step on this one as well. Yeah, it's a long document. Account 360 is another self-service use case. So everything which is related to your employee account. Everything can be done with this chatbot. It could be permissions, it could be similar things like, yeah, really, really everything. Join or leave us, that kind of information. Accessing the systems.

Yeah, yeah. Again, and I think this is kind of, you know, from a self-service perspective, you know, which accounts do I have access to? Does my password expire for this particular account? Use the chatbot to help you enable that. Again, chatbot checks, do you have permission to that particular system? And of course, you know, that, that could be determined during your onboarding as part of your onboarding record. Very easy to, to, to build a chatbot then to, to service these types of requests, right?

Yeah, it's a very common, it's a very common use case, especially with the password reset. I think in some organizations you can't just simply reset and you get just a message. And very often it's a lengthy process with several security checks in between, but that could be easily offloaded to the chatbot indeed. And it's a huge time saver and money saver.

Yeah, exactly. So the 8th one, we're already on 8 use cases in, I guess, less than 10 minutes. And this is all to do with payroll. Very interesting one, self-service. Again, all elements to do with payroll and remuneration, you know, can go as deep as pension contributions, pay and benefits, taxation. Very, very good use case for self-service HR bots. High degree of employee satisfaction because again, it's 24/7. No need for HR to email around potentially confidential information of an employee with regards to their remuneration. So in my opinion, you know, worth mentioning that this, this is also a very, very popular self-service HR bot that, that people opt to implement.

Great. So yeah, lots of self-service topics, but HR is vast, has other areas as well. Another big area is in general compensation and benefits. And there we see a few, few use cases you could use chatbots. So it's really, yeah, it's not the self-service anymore. So it's making the life of HR staff easier, interacting with insurance providers and backend systems of insurance providers to do certain tasks, updating policies, that kind of stuff. You have new employees, everything when it comes to joiners and leavers, that kind of stuff can be easily sit around this, this in this area, or you, you want to extract information as well about these insurances, and you, you pass on to your employees. So all that knowledge, similar like an FAQ, all that stuff could sit in there as well. So they are very, very important and generally quite management-heavy, not management-heavy, but activity-heavy area where chatbots can help. Once it's set up properly, it can be very useful for the team.

Yes, exactly. And I think, you know, it all again comes under compensation and benefits. You know, you might have a health claim that the employee needs to go through. Again, that whole process can be quite cumbersome. You know, by using chatbots, you could really streamline that experience, that whole experience, try and conclude that as quickly as possible. So again, you know, very popular use case in this sort of the HR arena, especially like I said, for, you know, compensation and benefits. And, you know, then of course, you know, we mentioned payroll. But if you're close to retirement, or you are thinking about retirement, or you want to look in the future and look at your retirement benefits, you know, again, that, that's something that's, that could be automated using a chatbot, where a chatbot can talk to you about it, perhaps your pension contributions, and potentially what your package would look like, right?

Absolutely. So yeah, all these Yeah, in this area, all these things, compensation and benefits, yeah, will definitely lead to lots of employee satisfaction, as well as this next one, rewards and recognition. So you can use chatbots as well to deal with that area of the business and to send messages to your employee if there was a specific project, maybe very successful, and then there's some element of rewards in it, and they then sort of need to accept certain things. And so that kind of stuff can then flow back into the HR department easily. But I think some elements of that are still very human-based. These are just obviously sections of this whole process. It doesn't mean that we're now doing the whole recognition process by a bot, but it can support the HR department in these areas.

Yes, exactly. And that kind of leads us to, um, the recruitment element. Um, and, you know, this could be internal or external recruitment. And, you know, the whole recruitment process as a whole, from, you know, pre-screening available job positions, um, you know, the actual application process, the upload of CVs Interview booking, you know, text alerts and notifications to say, you know, when your actual interview is. So that whole sort of recruitment process and the interaction between the candidate, the employee once you onboarded, the HR department, and, you know, potentially also your manager-to-be, and all of that can be actually wrapped up in a chatbot sort of conversation. And, you know, that could flow really, really nice, very eloquently. And also, you know, what a great use case to demonstrate the progressive employer by automating all of this in a very, very eloquent way, very user-friendly. Great satisfaction on this one from a prospective employee's perspective.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a very, very powerful, um, to do the whole recruitment process really, um, or supporting the whole recruitment process really with chatbots.

There's always, you know, you talk about recruitment and then I think about a couple of other ones, you know, um, you know, if you look at, um, another example is, um, you know, onboarding of of employees, you know, and this is either before or after employment, and that's all, you know, digital contract signatures, for example, the creation of the employee accounts, you know, so that, that, that's something that the chatbot can do as part of this process. And, you know, after you've been onboarded, perhaps a reminder of your mandatory training Perhaps even work celebration, it's your, you know, work anniversary, you know, happy work anniversary, just those kind of soft benefits. Of course, you know, after onboarding, you know, it could send out important alerts on internal processes or changes to processes, and this can all be sort of job-specific. And, you know, offboarding as well, that's the other side of the equation where, you know, it could manage your exit interview, you know, it could manage your employee exit checklist, for example, make sure all of those activities are completed. So again, very, very sort of a robust use case you know, for HR within the realm of recruitment. And then of course the recruitment process itself, you know, this, the, the job posting, internal advertising, uh, I touched on, you know, scheduling of interviews, um, employee screening, blacklisting of employees, uh, you know, all of these things are again just, just adds to those, those benefits to a business to deploy a chatbot, you know, with inside HR. Talking, you know, for best part of 15 to 20 minutes, you know, and already if you look at the use cases just for a sort of self-service and the recruitment process itself, you know, that's almost 20. And, you know, and we're not even done with HR, you know. You know, what about training? What about appraisals? All of these kind of use cases that's just sort of very, very popular ones that organizations choose to automate using chatbots.

Absolutely. It's really, really a vast area and we are really scratching here on the surface, but it should give you a really, really good idea of what is possible. Yeah, you mentioned talent management. So yeah, that's very important. Once you have done all this onboarding, it is really important that you retain ideally your talent as long as possible, as long as they like to be with your business, of course. But you can obviously contribute to that a lot while you are the employer. And I think getting the right training, the ongoing training and all that stuff in place is important. And sometimes it is a hurdle, too much sort of activities done old-fashioned. So So then there's not enough training. So in the chatbot and a nice, obviously the logic behind that chatbot can engage with your employee to maybe look back into the LinkedIn Learning courses again. So once a month, give them a nudge, maybe check in, how is this training going? How's that going? How is it generally going? And I think that goes a little bit into the feedback self-service, but this, Some of that stuff really comes— is initiated by the employee, but when it comes here to talent management and talent performance management, and these areas are sort of proactively driven by the talent management team, and the chatbot can then support in that area a lot. I think appraisals, I think, yeah, supporting just the appraisals process as well, probably the real appraisals you would still do face-to-face with your manager, but collecting the feedback maybe from when you think about a 360 review during the appraisal process, you will, you will collect a lot of feedback from maybe fellow team members, and, and they will, they will give feedback on a certain employee. And if you, if you manage that process easily as well via, via chatbot, everyone is engaged and likes to give feedback instead of logging in somewhere, going to a spreadsheet. Oh no. So now this is nice, controlled, and, um, enjoyable actually to, to work with. And, um, I think that, that really supports the whole talent, um, retention, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, if you look at performance management, um, you know, you look at your career planning, performance reviews, coaching tips, the goal management, you know, guided action planning. So these are all things that potentially managing that chatbot can be deployed. Of course, when human interaction is required, then human action should be available with your line manager, but it's all kind of just peeling away those layers of, you know, obstacles to really make the whole sort of HR function operate in the interest of an employee. And, you know, the way to do that is to really take these mundane activities away from the HR managers so they can, you know, look at the true HR function itself, and that's employee well-being and looking after the talent, right? And I think that's really the sort of the goal for these use cases to get to that point.

Absolutely. So I think the next one is more like a very admin-centric HR area reporting. So HR needs to do a lot of reports. Everyone really needs to do a lot of reports as it seems. But yeah, similar like we had in another episode in manufacturing logistics. So obviously the chatbots can support with creating reports and getting the output key KPIs from systems through chatbots. So this is, instead of being bombarded with lots of data, you might be just interested in a very specific KPI. So you can ask a chatbot to go into the reporting backend and get that information information out. And the same, same really applies to measuring process performance and those kind of relevant key, key KPIs. And yeah, and with the communication you get the relevant information and maybe based on that information you can pass something back to the chatbot to, to apply certain new thresholds, new targets for the day, all that kind of stuff. To make your life easier in the global human resources.

Yes, exactly. And that goes hand in hand, like you say, you know, kind of measuring these processes, because of course, as the chat goes on, you know, from an engagement perspective, you can collect all of these data points. And, you know, from an HR reporting perspective, again, provide the chatbot that could then surface these reports for leadership so they can actually look at the numbers around, you know, staff attrition or staff turnover, retention, you know, all of these things that's really important, you know, also reports on sick leave, paid time off. So all of these important sort of metrics that you can make available again 24/7 on the chatbot.

Yeah, that's really a long list. And I think that, yeah, I think is it for the human resources section. I hope this, this list really gave you good inspiration of what can be addressed in your business. And we're happy to discuss all these things with you. Just ping us on, on all the social media networks. And, and yeah, and yeah, and then probably over the next weeks we will cover, cover more. I think this was just one, one really human resource part of internal chatbots, but there there will be more scenarios on the sales side of it, the management side of it, the help desk and claim management. So, so many areas we will, we will address going forward in the next episodes. And yeah, so as always, give us feedback and on our website theautomationguys.net, and we will be we'll be picking up these new topics you're suggesting. Yeah, thank you very much for listening, and let's automate it! Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. If you like this episode, please give us a 5-star rating, and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any upcoming episode. We hope you will tune in next time. And until then, let's automate it!