Whether you love or loathe the idea of HR being involved in the day to day running of your business, you can’t deny it plays an important role. The use of technology has made HR smarter and easier, so how can you use technology to its full advantage?
Driving HR Efficiency with Technology
Improving workplace efficiency is about helping employees work smarter, not harder. Fortunately, in today’s world, technology can help improve efficiency and productivity in the workplace.
No matter the size of the organisation, its needs can feel overwhelming, especially when you are faced with normal factors like team holidays and evolving duties, or even new responsibilities due to COVID-19.
With many organisations increasing the use of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is increasing pressure for employers and employees to adopt technology and tools needed for collaborating, communicating, and working from a distance.
Today’s Challenges
With efficiency and productivity as common workplace goals, it’s important to first recognise the daily challenges. In doing so, an organisation can understand where improvements can make a big impact. HR professionals spend much of their everyday time and energy on the following tasks:
- Managing employee information
- Managing payroll, including time sheets and paid time off (PTO) requests
- Managing employee benefits
- Planning organisation events
- Staying up to date on regulations
Not all workplaces are the same, so the best way to find out what’s holding employees back from being efficient is to simply ask.
Technology Applications
Processing improvements and technology can help improve workplace efficiencies for HR professionals. Software can also help ensure compliance, privacy, and accuracy of sensitive employee information.
HR workflow automation can help ease tasks, improve accuracy, increase employee buy-in and more. Consider how the following challenging workflows could be revamped with automation and software:
- Onboarding—Technology can help improve process accuracy and speed up the process flow. New employees can complete and sign onboarding paperwork electronically, and then stakeholders can be notified automatically to stay informed.
- Offboarding—This process is just as important as onboarding. Technology can ensure records are well kept and accurate, ensure compliance and give HR leaders peace of mind as employees leave the organisation.
- Employee information—It’s easy for errors to happen with manual data entry. Software can make the overall management process simple, from collecting employees’ confidential information to retrieving it at a later time.
- PTO requests—Automating time-off requests with a workflow system can speed up approval time. Depending on an organisation’s PTO policy, employees may use more of their earned PTO if there are fewer obstacles to submit requests. This can result in higher productivity overall as a result of employees taking time off to recharge, which is especially important during the pandemic.
- Project planning—This will vary by organisation and depend on unique challenges or pain points. Consider projects within the HR department or projects throughout the organisation that HR is supporting. Start with evaluating current workflows and identifying existing problems. Focus on the areas where efficiency can be improved.
When it comes to an initiative that applies to an entire organisation, buy-in and engagement are critical starting points. If the technology makes sense to stakeholders, the initiative is much more likely to get support.
Summary
Automation and technology can help improve efficiency and productivity for employees, especially for HR professionals whose attention and time may be pulled in many different directions. Add in evolving duties or COVID-19 response plans, and HR professionals’ plates are feeling full. Start small with automating projects or processes and tackle the biggest pain points first.
