As your business scales up, your HR department’s responsibilities will also increase as they process a flood of new hires, time-off requests, payroll runs, and workplace management issues.
By instantly running routine, repetitive, and monotonous tasks, automation software can eliminate mistakes and inefficiencies in the HR department, freeing up HR professionals for people-focused issues that require a human touch. Here are the five top examples of ways your HR department could benefit from automation.
Recruiting
Especially for new and growing small businesses, recruiting is one of the most essential HR functions, as the people hired set the tone for the company’s policy and culture. As such, recruiters and managers should give their full attention to meeting and evaluating candidates to judge their company fit, rather than wasting valuable time on paperwork.
With automation, hiring managers can design recruitment campaigns and have them executed hands-free – the software will automatically post job listings, screen resumes, rank candidates, send follow-up emails, and schedule assessments and interviews.
With this, recruiters can leave the lower-level paperwork management to the automation software, quickly identify the most qualified talent, and make the best of their time interviewing and assessing candidates.
Onboarding
Once you’ve found the perfect candidate, HR will then need to onboard them, filling out the contracts and paperwork and setting the employee up for their first day of work.
Rather than wasting time finding, printing, and shuffling through papers, automated onboarding software will automatically send new hires the documents they need to sign and resources like the employee handbook. The software can also help employees sign up for programs and applications they need and request equipment from the IT department.
This quickens the onboarding process, allowing employees to start working faster. Not only does this boost company productivity, new employees will also feel a sense of reassurance that they joined such a capable and well-put-together company.
The automation software will also act as a secure digital database for employee documents, meaning employees can consult HR policies and their contracts at any time without having to bother HR workers. Similarly, HR workers can easily pull up employee files for easy management. This has the added benefit of quickening the offboarding process, as well.
Payroll
When speaking of repetitive HR tasks, none are as clockwork as running payroll. Not only is this task complicated and monotonous, but a company could also face severe penalties for not compensating employees properly in accordance with federal and state tax and labor regulations. Your HR department may feel considerable stress when it comes to running payroll.
A payroll automation tool working in tandem with automatic time tracking will ensure that employee wages are calculated correctly, withholdings are deducted properly, and paychecks are delivered on the dot, reducing the company’s chances of facing legal action. Most software also includes W-2 and W-4 preparation come tax season.
In addition, the software provider will also take care of researching new tax and payroll laws, automatically updating their processes to stay in full legal compliance. This is especially useful for busy business owners and HR managers without much background knowledge of accounting or taxes.
With an automated payroll system, your HR staff and employees alike can rest assured that wages are being paid correctly every single time, letting them focus on other tasks without worrying about financials or wages coming in late.
If you’re struggling to find the perfect payroll solution, Humanresource.com compares and reviews all of the best options available to help you pick the best software for your business.
Timekeeping
As we mentioned earlier, HR automation software can automatically track how many payable hours an employee worked, ensuring that wages are calculated properly.
On top of that, automation software can also manage PTO, acting as a portal through which employees can request leave. On the manager’s side, all they have to do is approve it – once approved, the days off will automatically be scheduled in the company calendar so everyone can see it, and the software will automatically deduct it from their leave allowance.
Employees can rest assured that with digital proof of the request, their leave can’t be lost due to human error or canceled at the last minute. They’ll certainly be happy that their leave is being processed as fast as possible.
Expense Management
Employees who frequently travel or make purchases on behalf of the business are eager to be reimbursed as quickly and accurately as possible for their expenses. However, if your HR department relies on paper receipts and manual calculations for expense filings, not only does this slow the reimbursement process, but it could also stress out employees who are responsible for keeping track of every single receipt.
Expense management software automation allows employees to scan receipts using their device camera, creating a running record of their expenses in real-time. This improves the accuracy of your company’s travel expenses and speeds up the expense reimbursement process, making it easy to balance the books for everyone.
Plus, with digitized records of expenses, your HR department can analyze the data to reveal trends in spending to optimize its expense allocation for the next employee trip or purchase.
Final Thoughts
Automation can handle time-consuming HR taste with instantaneous speed and complete accuracy, freeing up your HR workers for more important tasks. They’ll also be quite grateful to be saved from such boring work. Implementing automation in your HR department will enable HR to serve employees faster and better, boosting productivity and workplace satisfaction for everyone.
