7 HR Workflow Automations to Run Today
By AutoKitteh
HR departments have a lot to handle—and that’s an understatement. They’re in charge of tasks like employee onboarding, training, and offboarding. But, as your organization scales, the sheer volume of these repetitive tasks can overwhelm the HR team and put a significant burden on DevOps and IT teams that provide technical support.
Modern organizations are rapidly adapting to HR workflow automation to simplify repetitive tasks, save money, and improve employee experience. According to Gartner, 57% of companies use HR automation to improve employee experience, 56% try to avoid repetitive tasks, and 51% focus on cost-cutting.
What is HR workflow automation?
HR workflow automation uses technology to automatically manage routine HR tasks like candidate screening, interview scheduling, and document management. By turning legacy and manual processes into IT-based automation, your organization can reduce errors, stay compliant, and allow HR teams to focus on more strategic work. HR workflow automation is especially valuable for enterprise companies since they typically have a higher volume of HR tasks, more employees, and more complex processes.
4 Reasons Why You Should Harness HR Workflow Automation
- Save Time and Improve Productivity: Automate payroll, onboarding, and document management to save hours for HR to contribute to strategic initiatives rather than repetitive tasks.
- Reduce Errors and Ensure Compliance: Automating the tasks reduces the possibility of making mistakes in critical areas like payroll accuracy, saving the company from costly legal and financial complications.
- Improve Employee Experience: Automating processes such as onboarding and vacation requests optimizes workflows, improving the employee experience and boosting morale over time.
- Scalability and Flexibility: As the organization grows, this automated workflow should be flexible to meet the higher demands and maintain efficient and manageable HR processes using no additional human resources.
7 HR Workflow Automations to Run Today
Here are seven HR workflows that every organization should consider to increase efficiency and reduce the workload on HR teams. These workflows are particularly relevant for DevOps and engineering teams, which will be responsible for setting up these systems.
Employee onboarding is the process of hiring new employees. It starts with signing the contract, and onboarding is repetitive and prone to human errors. Automating this workflow will ensure that new hires receive all the required information and resources on time, reducing the possibility of missed steps or incomplete documentation.
Automation Implementation Ideas:
- Integrate with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): Automate the process of pushing candidate information from the ATS into the onboarding system.
- Automated Task Assignments: Establish workflows that automatically allocate onboarding tasks when an offer is accepted to relevant departments, such as IT for email setup and HR for paperwork.
- Timed Reminders: Set up reminders to ensure all onboarding steps are taken on time.
Document management involves organizing, storing, and retrieving employee-related documents, such as contracts, performance reviews, and compliance paperwork. Turning this time-consuming manual process into digital automation enables HR to find information and ensure documents are safely stored in a manner compliant with data protection regulations.
Automation Implementation Ideas:
- Centralized Repository: Use a centralized, cloud-based document management system for authorized personnel to easily access and retrieve documents.
- Automated Categorization: Implement workflows that automatically categorize and tag documents upon upload.
- Secure Access: Ensure the system features role-based access controls to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.
Payroll processing involves calculating and distributing employee salaries, as well as managing deductions, taxes, and benefits. The consequences of payroll mistakes can be highly costly, both legally and financially. Payroll automation ensures that all payroll calculations are accurate, timely, and compliant.
Automation Implementation Ideas:
- Integration with HR and Timekeeping Systems: Automatically integrate the payroll system with HR software and timekeeping tools to calculate hours worked.
- Automated Tax Calculations: Automation will allow for the calculation of taxes and other deductions.
- Self-Service Portal: Allow employees to access an online portal to view payslips, update personal information, and log correction requests.
Training and career development programs help employees improve their core skills while adding value to your organization. Manually tracking training sessions and certifications can lead to inefficiencies and gaps in employee development.
Automation Implementation Ideas:
- Automated Scheduling: Set up workflows that automatically schedule training sessions and send reminders to employees and trainers.
- Progress Tracking: Use automation to monitor training progress and completion, updating employee records with completed certifications.
- Personalized Learning Paths: Create personalized learning paths that automatically adjust based on the employee’s role, performance, and career goals.
Absence authorization manages applications for time off, sick leave, and every other form of employee absence. Failing to automate employee absence can lead to productivity losses and hefty workloads for HR managers juggling multiple staff schedules.
Automation Implementation Ideas:
- Self-Service Requests: Implement a system where employees can submit leave requests online, which then go through an automated approval workflow.
- Real-Time Calendar Updates: Integrate with the company calendar to automatically update team schedules and notify relevant stakeholders of upcoming absences.
- Leave Balances: Track and update leave balances automatically, ensuring employees and managers have real-time visibility into available leave.
Offboarding involves all the steps required to properly terminate an employee’s employment with the company, including final paychecks, return of company property, and exit interviews. A structured offboarding process reduces the risk of legal issues, ensures a smooth transition, and can provide valuable feedback for improving employee retention. Furthermore, it prevents any security risks due to access management.
Automation Implementation Ideas:
- Automated Exit Surveys: Send exit surveys to departing employees to gather feedback on their experience.
- Task Checklists: Create automated checklists for managers to ensure all steps are completed, such as revoking access to company systems and retrieving devices.
- Data Retention and Compliance: Ensure that the employee’s data is archived according to legal requirements and that sensitive information is securely deleted.
Performance reviews involve evaluating employee performance, setting goals, and providing feedback, typically annually or semi-annually. However, performance reviews often require coordination with managers, HR, and employees to schedule meetings for reviews, evaluations, and feedback. Automating this workflow ensures consistent reviews, captures clear documentation and feedback, and streamlines the process.
Automation Implementation Ideas:
- Automated Reminders: Set up reminders for both employees and managers to complete performance reviews by designated deadlines.
- Template Integration: Use templates for evaluation forms that can be automatically populated with relevant data, simplifying the review process for managers.
- Data Analysis: Implement tools that analyze performance data and generate insights, helping managers make informed decisions during the review process.
Adopting these workflows will help your HR department avoid repetitive tasks and focus on more strategic initiatives, improve the experience of existing employees, and attract new candidates to your organization. However, automating and orchestrating different tools for each of these processes requires significant effort, time, and expert knowledge. For example, even a few lines of code require security and infrastructure requirements under the hood.
There are many helpful tools out there to support automation. But, these tools cannot support complex automation requirements, involving integration with multiple systems. In instances like this, you can turn to AutoKitteh.
With AutoKitteh, you can build all the workflows discussed above, making it easy to create long-running processes. Simply use AutoKitteh to create durable workflow automation with basic coding knowledge, and AutoKitteh takes care of the rest, including secrets management, authentication, and logging. AutoKitteh’s durable workflows assure you that workflows will continue, even if servers crash, so you have total peace of mind.
Book a demo today to transform the productivity and efficiency of business processes with AutoKitteh.
