The Human Resources department is too slow, too bureaucratic, lacks empathy or communicates cryptically: HR departments regularly have to contend with such accusations. If something is not possible, the responsibility is often shifted to Human Resources. Yet it is precisely the employees in this department who hold the key to a company's success: its human capital. We'll show you how you can restore Human Resources's positive image and at the same time make your team's workflows extremely easy.
These should be the tasks of an Human Resources department
As the name suggests, the HR department usually takes care of everything related to people in the company. Employees are a company's most important asset/resource and their development and management are accordingly crucial to its overall success.
A small list of activities:
- Search for new employees and recruit talent
- Hiring and (unfortunately also) firing people
- Structure teams sensibly and deploy employees in a targeted manner
- Training for the workforce
- Supervise employee benefit programs
- Check compliance with employee and employer laws
- Personnel management
- Settle dispute
Basically, HR departments should maximize the productivity of employees and optimize the workforce. All framework conditions should be right so that they can deliver the best possible performance. Companies, such as Google, invest a lot in their HR department in order to retain and motivate employees in the long term. For example, there are numerous facilities, such as a wellness center, at the company headquarters. Even if not every company has to go that far - satisfied employees are essential for productivity.
These problems take people out of the equation
According to the Harvard Business Review, a company loses an average of 21 percent of its productivity due to time-consuming, repetitive tasks. Time losses are caused by hierarchical systems and processes or an entrenched corporate culture. What is done once is always done that way.
The HR department has a key role to play, as it contributes significantly to the company's organization and hierarchical structure. Talents have a positive effect on productivity. Discovering and promoting these also falls within the remit of the HR department. According to the study, "inspired" and satisfied employees are the most productive. Human Resources management should therefore aim to inspire employees rather than just motivate them to perform their jobs. This includes: freeing employees from repetitive, time-consuming, boring tasks.
But it is precisely these monotonous processes that steal important time from the Human Resources department itself. Filling out forms, typing data from spreadsheets or creating payrolls by hand - all of this eats up time that HR employees spend on annoying activities instead of dealing with people.
Revolutionize HR with Process Automation
Process automation such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or Cloud Automation with iPaaS helps HR departments get back to their core business: People and employee relations. Tedious administrative tasks, such as accounting, can be automated.
Software bots take over monotonous processes - roughly speaking, everything that has to do with documents. They can automatically reconcile data, fill out forms, create invoices or even scan applications for certain skills and train employees. Tasks that would take HR staff hours. This leaves them more time to deal with talent and increase the satisfaction of the rest of their colleagues.
A practical example:
If a new employee is to be hired, there are many bureaucratic tasks. The position must be advertised, applications sifted through and interviews conducted. Once the new employee has arrived, he or she needs network access and documents. All of this can be automated: Software bots automatically create a job posting from requirements, sort out unsuitable applicants and enter data directly into the system to automatically apply for all access. Human Resources staff can focus on attracting the talent to the company and retaining it for the long term.
The solution of the equation
Automating personnel management does not have to be expensive. Moreover, there is no need to hire trained software programmers - RPA basics can be learned in online courses at various digitization academies, for example, without much prior knowledge.
Small insertion: Bots and People is the first German academy for the automation of business processes. We train interested parties in flexible courses to become Automation Strategist, among other things. Here, the focus is on establishing the role of an all-rounder who recognizes, analyzes, evaluates and ultimately automates processes. With this 360° training, even smaller companies can get started in process automation and do not have to set up an expensive Center of Excellence or have individual processes automated by external companies.
The entire company can benefit from automating the HR department. Although two-thirds of the companies surveyed in a study by management consultants KPMG say they want to automate Human Resources, only 40 percent have a concrete plan for doing so. Further training helps to actually put digital transformation into practice.
Human Resources need to become more human again
Process Automation with its various technologies (RPA, Process Mining, iPaaS, etc.) helps Human Resources departments to focus on the creative part of their work again. Instead of poring over invoices and working through mountains of documents every day, they can talk to talent, promote employees in a targeted manner and develop innovative HR concepts. Process Automation takes over tedious tasks so Human Resources can finally focus on the most important thing again: people.
