In today’s fiercely competitive business environment, outdated HR processes are unsustainable. They can prevent companies from scaling, cause expensive compliance breaches, and accelerate employee turnover. In our decades of experience helping organizations transform their processes by automating human resources, we’ve heard the following concerns countless times:
- “My HR team is too busy processing paperwork to talk to candidates and employees.”
- “It took us a month to review the 1,000 applicants for a job posting. When we reached out to our preferred candidates, they already had jobs elsewhere.”
- “Our employee files are all paper-based, and I don’t know where to start figuring out what is missing for each one.”
- “We were just fined thousands of dollars for missing I-9s.”
- “Our employees can’t get access to the information in their personnel files; it’s causing frustration for our team members.”
If any of these red flags resonate with you, it’s time for HR automation.
HR automation, or a content services platform, is stacked with enticing benefits. But above all, it can eliminate tedious, time-consuming tasks so your HR team can focus on what really matters: the people. Let’s explore 8 of the most common warning signs that a company needs HR automation. Plus, we’ll reveal how technology and automation can solve these challenges.
8 Signs You Need HR Automation
1. Your HR Team is Overloaded
If your HR team’s stress and burnout rates are at an all-time high, it’s a warning sign that your HR department needs HR automation. Often, HR departments find themselves in this situation during periods of rapid growth, which brings an uptick in recruiting, onboarding, performance monitoring, and other time-consuming responsibilities. HR automation can automate and streamline these processes to save time and resources, all while increasing productivity. The more your administrative HR tasks can be automated, the more time you can devote to attaining and sustaining a strong workforce.
2. Your Budget and Staff Count Have Decreased
Many HR departments are stretched too thin with a budget that goes down every year. Fortunately, HR automation requires less human interference than manual HR processes, helping your HR department to operate efficiently, even when short-staffed. It also allows your employees to manage documents more easily in a digital format, allowing them to maintain better compliance.
3. You’re Still Paper-Based
If you’re suffering from operational expenses eating away at your budget, this burden will only get worse if you continue using a paper-based system. Automating human resources processes and eliminating paper documents helps organizations spend fewer resources on operational processes. It can even free up space. At Naviant, our HR team never has to enter its filing cabinets because all documents are available digitally. At Naviant, our HR team never has to directly enter its paper filing cabinets (actually, we don’t have any.) This is because documentation is available to those who need it in real time, including HR professionals, managers, and employees. A convenient digital access point saves considerable time, as staff no longer must hunt down physical documents.
4. You’re Struggling with Compliance
When your HR department relies heavily on paper, you have extremely limited visibility into your documents and documents can challenging to locate. As a result, HR audits can be painfully slow, stressful, and come with hefty fines. If this situation sounds familiar, you need HR automation. This technology makes the audit process easier and faster. As a result, you can trust that all documents you need are complete, secure, and in the right location. A content services platform also allows you to reduce or eliminate pre-audit preparation tasks and set time-based, secure limited access for your auditors. When you implement these measures, you raise security standards while simplifying the entire audit process.
5. Your Recruiting and Onboarding Process is Inefficient
Efficient recruiting and onboarding processes can greatly impact your organization’s success. Unfortunately, many organizations lose out on top talent due to slow, outdated recruitment processes. And many more fail to provide optimal first impressions to new hires thanks to the high volume of tedious, manual tasks that overcomplicate their first week and remove the personal touch.
That’s why automating your time-consuming, multi-step recruiting and onboarding tasks need to be a priority. You can use HR automation to streamline tasks like:
- Creating job ads
- Response Tracking
- Resume Screening
- Pre-Employment Communication
- Onboarding Task Automation
- Managing the Exit Interview Process
- Remove Application Access on a Specified Date
- Fill Out & Upload Necessary Documents
- I-9 Management
- Managing Document Retention
- New Hire Surveying
- Update Personal Information for Current & Former Employees
With these time-consuming responsibilities off your plate, you’ll be able to scoop up top talent before your competitors can and give your new hires the personal attention and company introduction they deserve.
6. You Have a High Staff Turnover Rate
High staff turnover can be costly and hurt your organization’s reputation. Poor management and leadership are among the top reasons employees cite for leaving their jobs, and out-of-touch, convoluted HR processes can contribute to this perception. As a result, creating error-free, streamlined processes with HR automation can positively impact the employee experience, improving retention. In addition, you can improve the employee experience even further by using the time HR automation saves you to build relationships with employees and boost engagement.
7. You’re Handling Data and Building Reports Manually
Inputting and retrieving your data manually is tiresome and time-consuming. Plus, it can cause serious compliance, accuracy, and security issues. And these risks apply to building reports manually, too. HR automation can complete manual, repetitive tasks like tax forms, PTO requests, data entry, and enrollment consistently and accurately. It also centralizes all your information, so all your forms, documents, and legally binding eSignatures exist in a single location, so they’re easy to retrieve and never get lost. HR automation also enhances data security. It’s extremely granular regarding user access, ensuring that only users with the proper rights and privileges can access documents. It even offers complete audit trails and encrypts all data, whether at rest, in transit, or in use, so you can rest easy knowing your data is secure at all times.
8. Audits and Retention Have Become a Nightmare
If you’re managing document retention, audits, and compliance manually, you’re putting yourself at a high risk of errors. Errors that put employees’ livelihoods at stake and can put your organization at risk of reputational and financial damage. HR automation tracks and calculates everything for you without error, eliminating this time-consuming, tedious task from your to-do list. To make life even easier, you’ll be able to find the data you need much easier, which will make audits a breeze.
It's Time to Ditch Paper in Your HR Department
Check out this infographic to learn why paper files aren’t just expensive and time-consuming for your HR department, but they can also be dangerous.
All Signs Point to Automating Human Resources
Automating human resources processes empowers you to shift your HR department’s role from an administrative and operational department to a people-first, business-driven strategic force. And on an individual level, eliminating your tedious, administrative tasks will go a long way in making your work life more fulfilling and enjoyable.
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