We all know that human resources (HR) are the heart of any company. They help new and current employees in important ways, keep the company's culture alive, and support many things that run smoothly. HR is one of the departments moving the quickest toward automation. In the past 2 years, the adoption of HR automation has increased by 599%. 

The human aspect of HR makes people wonder if this should be the last department to be automated. The fear is that you'll lose the human touch. And how can automation replicate the best of humanity? Well, it can't. But it also doesn't aim to. 

Rapid advances in HR automation mean that your HR departments are more streamlined than ever. Thanks to automation, HR teams can spend more time on tasks that have to do with people and find ways to give employees more power. 

What is HR automation?

HR is a busy department with hiring, onboarding, offboarding, and so much more because there is so much paperwork. HR Automation uses software to take on some of the more repetitive and time-consuming tasks. If you can make it a process, it can be automated. 

HR automation grew out of the need to find a long-term solution to the amount of paperwork that HR tasks require. Your employees are wasting their valuable soft skills on tedious tasks. The benefits of automation are immense. It will help you avoid employee burnout and turnover and guarantee that your company gets the most out of its Human Resources. 

How does it benefit your organization?

HR Automation leads to:

  • Increased productivity for your teams

  • Higher employee engagement 

  • Better communication and collaboration

  • Streamlined and consistent processes like training and onboarding

Studies show that automation can cut administrative costs for HR pros by 30% and for employers by 49%. 

The time saved by not having to do these tasks can be put toward high-value tasks that help the whole company. With that same time, they can solve issues faster and deliver quicker results. Another benefit is that getting everyone in the company to work together will be easier. Break down silos and reach your shared goals much faster. 

What processes should you automate?

Automation tools can easily take on HR strategies. Here are some of the strategies you can automate today:

  • Recruitment Wrkflows. Automatically post job ads, track responses, and screen the multiple CVs sent in. You can also automate the pre-employee assessments, prioritize and sort candidates based on chosen criteria, and automate communication. 

When you don't automate these tasks, your HR staff is wasting time. A bot or RPA can easily do these first-step processes in the recruitment process. This speeds up the filtering process and frees up the time of your hiring managers and people on your talent acquisition team.

  • Employee Onboarding & Offboarding Wrkflows. This process is the collection of documents for verification, forms that need to be signed, and the tools and resources that a new employee needs to get started. With automation, you can get instant notifications when these tasks are completed. This reduces the delay in getting a new employee started and ready to ramp up in their role. 

Automation can get your new employees started off on the right foot while saving time. From IT to payroll, you can cut down on monotonous tasks and focus on the most important aspect: the well-being of your active employees. Offboarding can help protect the company and leave a good impression on former employees when done the right way. This requires the human touch. Everything else, automation can cover. 

  • Claims & Request Processing. Expense management is conventionally when someone on your HR team checks, processes, pays and audits any expenses employees provide. Whether it's travel, entertainment, tools, and resources, it doesn't matter. The process is incredibly tedious when done manually.

We live in a globalized world, and business travel is back on the rise. For all the costs that come up on business trips, it takes a lot of work to keep track of and verify each payment.

Recent research by Forrester showed that almost 80% of organizations still rely on manually entering expense data, which exposes them to errors, duplication, and fraud. 

Automate with Wrk

Human resources is a balancing act. You need to flip from administration and paperwork to support every employee quickly. From recruitment to onboarding, this department is a heavy-touch industry. But today, it has proven vital to use automation to help HR staff as much as any other department. 

Let's delve deeper into how Wrk is helping teams to automate HR processes without losing the human touch.