#45 HR Automation: Automate 50% or more in your HR department

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. Yeah, generally we discuss all things process and automation with many people each day from all sorts of departments and companies, and more recently we had the pleasure to dive deeper into the topic of HR automation, also called HR 4.0. So, um, yeah, and so that's, that's why we think it would be great to cover HR automation more in depth again. Um, so we had a, we had a podcast interview a while back with Tugela People on HR automation. Uh, yeah, and today we want to share what we think is, um, or what HR automation is and how it can help your departments, uh, or your department, HR department, or your company. So let's jump in. Yeah, as you know, the, the human resources department is, it's a very crucial, but not really often too appreciated. So it's just, just there, needs to function, but it is a component really of any organization. And by taking charge of employee recruitment, onboarding, training, management disputes, all that stuff, HR plays an essential role. In really ensuring that, that resources or staff teams are working at peak efficiency. So it's, it's really, really important, and it should have real, real efficiency in every step. But what can you do to make the HR department more efficient? So that's what we cover here. What can you do to be more productive, more cost effective, and This is where HR automation really comes in. And yeah, we will look at the benefits and use cases in detail. I don't know, what do you think? Maybe you should, before, before we go into the benefits, shall we do a quick summary on HR automation on its own?

Yeah, I think it's probably worth our listeners, you know, to answer the question. I think everybody knows what's HR. Possibly not everybody knows what's HR automation. And, you know, HR automation, as the name obviously suggests, is, you know, the automation of business activities commonly performed by organizations' human resources department. So if you think about all those activities or many of them, what we do is we inject some automation and of course we get HR automation, but You know, more specifically, HR automation makes use of very specialized applications and technologies that can perform, you know, manual activities at speeds and accuracy that is much higher than what a human can do. And, you know, according to some analysis that you know, the McKinsey Global Institute done quite recently, 56% of the so-called hire-to-retire HR processes, you know, these are processes related to an employee's career at a company. So all of this can be automated using current technologies on the market. So that, that's more than half of all the processes with inside HR can be automated. Of course, you know, it is important to emphasize that, you know, HR automation is only intended to supplement and, I guess, enhance the work of your existing HR department. And, you know, at this stage, it's not really possible for HR automation to entirely replace I guess, a human employee. It is more just to take some of those, I guess, standard, repetitive, mundane tasks away, you know, from human employees that works with inside HR.

Yeah, so this is, as you mentioned, the high-volume repetitive tasks. So we had recently a conversation with a startup. So they, they're not a small company anymore, but they had this typical startup phase from maybe 30 employees receiving Series A investment, and they had to find 150 new employees within 6 months. And if you are not used to that kind of volume, like in the startup, doing all that stuff manually, going through the onboarding, checking all the documents, all that stuff, you can imagine your HR department, you would need to hire plenty of HR people if you're not automating. So, so if you look at these 50%, or during the onboarding, maybe even more steps, yeah, it would be a tremendous help if some automation would be in there. So, so I think that's a good segue into the benefits of HR automation. Yeah, so the most important benefit perhaps of HR automation is that it Saves employees a great deal of time and effort. So by all the manual tasks Arno mentioned, by automating HR tasks, you can remove these tedious manual items from, from the employee's inbox. This, this really frees up time to focus on the really important stuff. So like the real face-to-face conversations you might do to have time for, or you need, you need to have time for. If there's some problems and like really, really big problems with maybe employees' grievance or some other sort of performance-related activities. Yeah, so it's really good to do, to get the automation on these repetitive and mindless tasks really. And automation makes your overall business process more predictable, more streamlined, transparent, and more efficient. So if you have that high volume like I mentioned earlier. Yeah, so you can really achieve that. And a big, big part of onboarding also is your human workers are making mistakes, and that could have a huge impact on sort of the onboarding experience. So onboarding is just one example of a process. But so if you, for example, a new starter, and the HR department is making mistakes and putting information wrong, and it's just delaying sort of the onboarding and making the onboarding experience less, less enjoyable. Yeah, it's not really good. So the automation can, can make sure everything is correct on time without friction. And yeah, so that's, that's, that's sort of a key, key benefit there.

So yeah, so I think the next thing which we could look at is the technology. And, you know, that McKinsey report mentioned that the technology to automate that 50% plus exists today. So I think it's probably worth our listeners just to really just look at the HR automation trends, what's out there, you know, with inside the broader field of HR automation, you know, what are the technologies at play? And of course, the first one is artificial intelligence and, you know, and kind of subfields like machine learning as well. And these are critical to HR automation. And of course, broadly, the goal of AI is to simulate human intelligence within computers to make them think and function and behave the same way that humans can. So, you know, so all of these AI AI and cognitive technologies are out there, either built into platform or commodity-based to subscribe to. It is mature. So that's something that is obviously a massive trend with inside the HR automation space. The next one is process mining, and that's the task of mining data with inside your IT data. So event log databases, audit trails, and really identifying trends in your data and methods for improving them. Now, Sasha and myself have been talking quite a lot about process mining. It's quite a large topic, but it, it is a way to unlock some of those potential processes, and in this instance, within HR, that could benefit from automation. And the next one is chatbots. And again, chatbots are intelligent software agents, like virtual agents, that can communicate with, with end users in a human-like manner. And, you know, they could help these end users to answer questions, solve problem. And, you know, in many cases, chatbot can even replace the need to speak to a human agent. Um, and again, you know, according to IBM, chatbots can answer up to, uh, 80% of a user's routine query by themselves. So again, on the list, very trendy, Chatbots, we talk a lot about chatbots, very relevant in HR automation, self-service portals, how many leave have I got left, what's the HR policy on, you know, working from home. So all of these things can be serviced using chatbot technology. The fourth one is of course robotic process automation or RPA. And, you know, robotic process automation uses so-called robotic software workers who can perform in a wide range of these HR tasks with independence and autonomy. So RPA works best to automate very highly structured, repetitive, time-consuming manual activities. Again, we talk a lot about RPA in our podcast. Very, very big space for RPA with inside HR automation as well. Then of course, we've got our low-code automation and also our digital process automation. And of course, of course, low-code platforms enable even non-technical employees to build, you know, very robust production-ready software application to suit their needs and, you know, fulfill particular gaps. And, and of course, instead of waiting for software development teams to, to, to, to code software by hand, low-code tools empower users to, to sort of take these matters into their own hands and, and drive digital transformation. And again, with inside HR automation, all of the use cases that you might find, a low-code automation platform is, is really, in my opinion, a go-to thing for, for very quick rapid rollout of, of applications for, for HR automation. And then digital process automation, you know, that, that's similar to RPA, but this is typically larger in scope where it sort of focuses on the entire process and the entire workflow, you know, with inside your, your HR automation. So onboarding is a good example. There's a, a larger process there where there might be tasks that's assigned to humans, there might be tasks that's assigned to robots, and that kind of gives you that, that sort of holistic view of your process. So again, DPA, um, uh, platforms the Appians and the Nintex and the Netcalls of the world help you to map those end-to-end processes out and automate those. I guess the question is, which tasks can we automate then? Because that, that's probably quite a burning question on everybody's mind. Absolutely. Yeah.

So all these end-to-end processes you mentioned in HR can be, can be automated. And some of the most prominent ones. Yeah, so Arno discussed the technologies which are available. So yeah, now let's look at the most prominent ones. So recruitment is a big one, a very time-consuming one for companies. So you could automate posting job advertisements, screening resumes and CVs, sending pre-interview assessments, identifying out of that with AI, identifying promising candidates, sending all the relevant emails at the right time at the different stages of the recruitment process. So it's really, really helpful. I know there are lots of companies out there who say, yeah, I'm doing this with email and Excel. That's absolutely fine. We're talking about sort of the more, more high-volume kind of stuff. If you have an odd recruitment for one position, that's fine. But the more recruitment you do, you will find the limitations of Excel, email, and and that kind of stuff. So it makes sense to automate that. Employee onboarding, I mentioned that earlier, collecting all the relevant documents from employees, sending out the forms to sign, then also making sure the IT is available, the facilities are available, the key cards to get into the business facilities, to the building, getting the right access to the software. All that stuff is part of a process and It can be quite complex in some organizations because you can imagine you're hiring the sort of the 10th person of the IT department and the manager says, yeah, give Tom the right, the same permissions as Richard. Yeah, so that obviously needs to be put into process and ideally needs to be automated so it's compliant and all that stuff. So Employee onboarding can be really improved by automating it. The sort of the satisfaction during onboarding is very important for a new employee. Otherwise, you want them to start with a smile on the first day. And the onboarding obviously continues after they have stepped foot into the building. So maybe sort of the first week plans and all that stuff can be all automated and tracked. So it's a really big one. Employee benefits is a very popular one, keeping track of an employee healthcare plan, all the pension plans, sick leave, parental leaves, compensations at any given time. So that's very important to have that in on view. Automation will help you there. Very common one, holiday requests. It sounds simple, but lots of organizations are struggling with it. And with chatbots and with other technologies, you can make sure the requests are properly dealt with and with the least hassle for everyone involved. Payroll, a big one, obviously, every month. Everyone wants to receive their salary. Tracking and calculating employees' payments. We had furlough last year during the pandemic. It was a super tedious, complex task with flexible furlough and all that stuff. So if you could automate all the, all the individual payroll payments, that will be very useful. And yeah. Automation is the answer for that. Time and attendance is a big one, recording employees' time and hours worked based on where they enter and exit the premises. So all that stuff can be done with mobile phones, apps, automation. So yeah, the whole end-to-end process can be improved by putting these technologies Arno mentioned into the process. Yeah.

Well, that's a nice set of tasks, I guess. In summary, recruitment, the onboarding, the benefits management, holidays, payroll, time and attendance. I guess those, those are sort of the pillars of HR, and I guess the more HR automation you could build within Site, those pillars, the the better for your organization, driving costs down, optimizing efficiency. So that's great. So obviously we've, we've touched on the definition of HR automation. Hopefully everybody is up to speed with that and understand what that means. And of course, the various HR automation trends and technologies out there, and these technologies are available, they are out there. You know, I think it's just a question of getting started as small or as large as you want. Of course, between Sascha and myself, we've been in the automation space for over 20 years now. We've seen it all and, you know, we tend to be able to help people to get started on their automation journey. And if HR is your thing and you think there's a specific need inside HR, You know, get in touch with us, have a chat, you go to the website automationguys.net, you know, reach out, schedule a call, and of course, you know, we're more than happy to discuss some of the success stories within InsightHR, perhaps where to get started. You know, there are some sort of go-to use cases that we normally sort of discuss. Onboarding is a really good one that we see quite a lot. So, you know, if, if, if it's got a manual task, I'm pretty sure it can be automated. Is that right, Sascha?

Yeah, absolutely. We can definitely help there. And we want to automate all of it where it makes sense and just leave the unautomatable tasks available or left over. And yeah. So this is what we do, this is what we discuss here every week on the podcast, on Clubhouse, and yeah, on our blogs. And yeah, make sure you check out our website, theautomationguys.net. Reach out to Arno, myself, for sort of a quick expert call on HR automation. And yeah, until then, 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!