The benefits of doing business in the digital age is the ability to automate functions that are crucial to operations. Human Resources are one of the most important divisions within your organization and automation saves time and effort. HR managers who have the capacity to do more than juggle tasks linked to payroll, benefits administration, tracking time and attendance, and organize document storage perform better. The best way to ensure that HR leaders are exercising their talents that you hired them for is to automate as many of the human capital management tasks as possible, leaving them to the important work of actually managing employees and assisting employees in career management.
Payroll
Paying employees timely include the need to know who your team members are, their rate of pay, whether they are hourly or salary, time off accrued, and how much tax is deducted from their gross earnings. These are all components of payroll that are included in basic payroll systems and should be leveraged in any company as soon as it is financially feasible. Doing so saves time, money, and creates the capacity necessary to grow your organization. Automating payroll decreases the associated costs by 3 to 5 percent, according to Jim Wacek, the President of Insperity.
Tracking Time
Security is a risk factor in any business utilizing digital systems whether software related, or cloud-based. However, having a system that employees must use on their assigned devices as well as log in to track their time reduces the ability of having others illegally compromise time keeping integrity. Attendance and Time tracking systems also reduce human error and bias which allows managers to evaluate employee performance linked to time and attendance and address issues without data complications. When employees know that timekeeping systems are used within the organization, it also promotes productivity in that work hours reported must be allocated to assigned tasks and roles. This allows managers to clearly identify where hours that employees are paid for are spent.
Recruitment
Application tracking tools can help make recruiting a seamless process for HR managers. Business Intelligence (BI) that scans application materials for keywords, phrases, sentence structure, experience tags, education level, and other preferred hiring requirements aids in removing human bias and judgment from the candidate review process. Recruitment automation also helps to streamline the communication process between hiring managers and candidates reducing the error rate for communicating out the wrong information to the wrong people. A discreet benefit of recruiting BI is the time saved by filtering applicants through a system generated and managed recruiting workflow. Adjustments to the workflows are then standardized throughout the organization and applied to every applicant.
Onboarding
Onboarding can be a frustrating experience for both managers and new employees when using old fashion and outdated methods. Automating the onboarding process reduces potential mix-ups in schedules, orientation assignments, and provides new team members with a sense of affirmation in their decision to join the team. The average employer spends about $4,000 and spends 52 days onboarding new employees. The best way to ensure that money and time is well spent, is to deploy onboarding tools and processes that reduce frustration and encourage new employees to remain with your organization for the long haul.
Records Management
Cloud storage of employee information is very common these days, however, there must be a system- based interface for easy retrieval of data. Automated HR management tools provide the interface and functionality of managing documents necessary when hiring whether full or part time, temporary or permanent, contract or standard employee. Automated HR records management systems should have a repository for tracking the government required documents as well as an alert process for missing data. Without an automated records management system within your HR management workflow, an organization can be caught without the required documents on hand and suffer financial consequences or fines as a result.
Employee Evaluation
Performance reviews should take place regularly within your organization and can be easily automated to remain on schedule. Every valuable employee looks forward to understanding why their overall performance throughout the year is up to standard or needs improvement. Employee evaluations that occur outside of an automated system tend to be erratic, biased, and untimely which in turn causes frustration among the team. Automated performance reviews eliminate human error and judgment, which is a relief to employees as their annual salary increase and future state employment is usually determined by the evaluation outcomes. HR managers using automation for employee performance reviews have a more precise way of linking employee benchmarks and competencies to their assigned work efforts.
Scheduling
Competently executing management duties avoids resentment towards leaders by the employees they supervise. Automated HR management tools can help with scheduling on various levels and in different areas such as interviews, regularly scheduled one on one meetings and team training. Rather than manually scheduling appointments, the interaction between managers and employees or candidates can be preset within the tool features.
Communication
When HR management communication is automated, the right information gets to the right people. Similarities in names, especially in larger organizations, can result in human error and compromised confidentiality. Team collaborations are much smoother with automated HR management communication and amplifies accuracy in timekeeping as well as project management. Some HR management automation tools are savvy enough to extract statements from pdf documents and deliver the applicable information to only the affected employees. Imagine the productivity increase gained when communication is transmitted throughout the day by deploying these types of tools.
Payroll Taxes
Ensuring the proper taxes are remitted to the government is a key function within payroll operations. There are components to calculating payroll taxes that can easily become cumbersome to any HR management or payroll department. HR Management automation can track the amount of taxes an organization owes after paying employees. Automating your payroll taxes will not only save you time but avoid costly mistakes that consume business resources and reserved funds.
Abstract: The digital and technology advances we’re experiencing today has resulted in many automated processes throughout business operations. HR management has seen a significant rise in automation and this article outlines the most common functions that systems can manage.
