What is HR Automation in 2024?

Human resources (HR) is the cornerstone of every organization and is the first and last touchpoint across the employee lifecycle journey.

It's therefore of vital importance to ensure that experiences, processes, and tasks are as seamless and automated as possible.

I frequently speak with HR leaders who express that their reliance on manual HR processes results in inefficiencies and potential data loss, in addition to raising concerns about data protection. In this blog, I provide insights into tackling these issues by deploying HR automation software, covering its applications, benefits, challenges, and features.

Let's get started.

What is HR automation?

HR automation is the action that organizations take to automate manual tasks within the HR department. The goal of HR automation is to improve the productivity of the HR department, enhance employee experience, and ultimately save the business time and money.

Benefits of HR automation

• Productivity improvements: Process automation is a key driver of productivity improvements. By automating email, paper, or Excel-based processes HR departments can drive efficiencies, freeing up time to work on value-added tasks.
  
  

• Improved employee experience: In today's digital age, the Millennial and Gen Z workforce are digital-savvy and born into a world of digital devices. This unique lens into the world is also carried across into the expectations of employees to have end-to-end digital experiences. Meeting the needs of the digital workforce, automation software elevates employee experience by providing seamless communications, improved task management, and accelerated HR processes.
  
  

• Data-driven decision-making: Organizations deploying process automation software will benefit from improved quality data and reporting. By having a 360-degree view of HR activities, organizations can anticipate resourcing needs, make data-driven decisions in real-time, and effectively report to senior business leaders, all while accessing digital information stored in a centralized repository.
  
  

• Compliance: With data protection a key priority for business leaders, HR automation is ideal for keeping employee data secure while adhering to compliance legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and The CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act).
  
  

• Cost savings: A direct output of improved HR productivity is time and cost-saving for the business. The cost savings can be directed towards other HR priorities.

Examples of HR automation

• Employee onboarding: Onboarding is one of the key HR automation use cases we see at FlowForma. Employee onboarding automation streamlines the tasks involved in integrating new employees into an organization.

  But, how difficult is HR onboarding? I recently co-hosted a webinar where we automated an onboarding process in under 1 hour! You can check out the full webinar recording right here:

  
  

One example of an organization that successfully automated its onboarding with FlowForma's HR automation component is Morgan Construction.

Morgan Construction is an established construction company based in Canada. With over 1,000 employees and a successful growing business, Morgan Construction needed to transition from Excel-based HR reporting to an automated platform.

The HR department deployed FlowForma Process Automation and saw immediate benefits including:

📈 A dedicated onboarding digital form that collects data for each new employee

⌛ HR teams have access to real-time tasks to stay organized

🔎 All business stakeholders have access to real-time HR reporting

✅ Minimize manual errors in the onboarding process

⌚ Saved a significant amount of time, allowing Morgan Construction to scale its business without the need to add new positions

Learn more about the Morgan Construction case study here.

• Leave approval: Annual leave is one of the most common HR processes that requires approval from management. Requesting annual leave via email and recording it in Excel makes the process difficult for HR teams to track. Automating the leave approval processes streamlines the task, accelerates the approval request, and provides HR leaders with real-time visibility on requests for better decision-making.
  
  

• IT: Throughout an employee's tenure with an organization, they will have IT requirements. Whether it's a broken laptop, a request for a cell phone, or a new device requirement, employees typically need to request via the IT team. Requests sent via email can be lost or missed due to the volume of emails in an inbox. Automating IT requests streamlines communication, enhances task visibility for all stakeholders, and speeds up task completion.
  
  

• Expenses: Employees who are on the go during work hours often incur food, travel, and other business expenses. These employees need to record, report, and communicate their expenses to be reimbursed for the costs.

  Keeping track of expenses using emails or spreadsheets can be cumbersome and lead to missing receipts and delays in employees receiving reimbursement for their costs. Deploying automation software will streamline the expense approval process for employees and managers, leading to improved communications, visibility of data, and financial control on budget.
  
  

• Performance management: Performance management is one of the key roles in HR teams. Aligning KPIs with performance, ensuring business goals are met, and accelerating professional development are all critical tasks in performance management.

  HR teams that use emails or spreadsheets to track performance management will find the process slow and therefore the feedback loop to employees will be delayed. Automating the performance management process will have significant benefits to HR teams. Data can be recorded digitally and relayed back to employees in real-time leading to improved employee satisfaction and better reporting and analysis for the HR team.
  
  

• Training and development: Training has long been a crucial aspect of professional growth, but the rise of online learning has significantly accelerated its adoption rate. According to Holin IQ, online degrees and micro-credentials are expected to be worth $117Bn by 2025. This rapid growth has put pressure on HR to approve training and development requests.

  Due to the volume of requests, using an email or spreadsheet for tracking is simply inefficient for HR. Automating the training and development process streamlines the entire training and development process, accelerates approvals, and enhances employee experiences by supporting their educational development.
  
  

• Travel requests: Globalization has increased the volume of international business travel. In many organizations, travel requests need to be made to ensure visas, travel expenses, and destinations are approved by HR staff. Managed manually, these can be time-consuming HR tasks that result in delays to the travel request approval. But, automating these tasks can help accelerate the process, improve communication, and ensure that employees have a safe and organized business trip.

One example of a FlowForma customer benefiting from travel request automation is Abingdon & Witney College. Abingdon and Witney College is based in the United Kingdom and offers a range of vocational courses, Apprenticeships, Access to Higher Education, High Education, and Adult Education.

Abingdon and Witney College needed to automate a complicated Trips and Visits process used to sign off student excursions, which involved Health and Safety, Finance, and Curriculum Managers. The old process involved paperwork that risked being mislaid between campuses was slow to finalize, and was inefficient and costly.

Abingdon and Witney College deployed FlowForma to automate its Trips and Visits (among many other processes) and the results and ROI were significant. Abingdon and Witney College was able to save 1,665 hours on this process alone.

The time saved is equivalent to employing a full-time member of staff, ticking an important box for financial managers who frequently look for ways to do more with less.

Read more about the Abingdon and Witney College case study here.

• Exit processes: When employees leave an organization there are a series of processes that need to be triggered to ensure smooth offboarding. Systems access, security, and offboarding surveys need to be communicated to employees to ensure that the final HR tasks are completed.

  When these HR processes are conducted using emails, the process may be delayed or even incomplete when the employee finishes their contract.

  However, when an HR process automation platform is deployed, the offboarding process is completely streamlined, reducing security risk, ensuring an optimal employee experience, and providing HR with data to optimize future employee experiences.

Challenges of HR Automation

• Tech investment and ROI: HR leaders have a wide scope of priorities with competing projects and associated investments. One of the challenges HR leaders face is budget prioritization for process automation projects. Not only do HR leaders have to secure the budget, they need to be able to demonstrate tangible ROI for their investment.
  
  

• IT support and integration: When introducing new HR automation tools business leaders need to consider the existing technologies at play. Integrating with existing technologies will be critical to ensure data is consistent across all platforms and avoid the risk of data siloes.
  
  

• Security and compliance: With online security threats at an all-time high, organizations need to be cognizant of the security of the HR automation tool that they deploy. Security may also be tied into compliance that the HR team needs to adhere to. Therefore, sourcing a platform that has a proven track record in security data is critical.
  
  

• Resistance to change: Resistance to change is natural amongst employees, especially when it concerns technology. Business leaders must work with employees to showcase the value of using the tool, and how it makes their work day easier and more productive.
  
  

• Skills gap: All new HR automation tools will require some level of training. Organizations need to ensure adequate levels of training are provided to encourage users to engage with the platform.
  
  

• Adoption: The adoption of any new technology is critical to the success or failure of the project. Organizations need to implement a technology adoption strategy to encourage employees to engage with the platform.