Human resources departments handle critical aspects of business operations – managing people. Functions like payroll, benefits, and recruiting remain primarily manual despite technologies transforming nearly all other business areas over the past decade.
Reliance on paper trails and spreadsheet trackers creates massive inefficiency for HR teams. As administrative bandwidth becomes consumed by repetitive tasks, there is little time left for strategic initiatives that create value.
HR process automation provides the solution – using software robots and artificial intelligence to systematize workflows. By seamlessly handling high-volume employee transactions, automation liberates HR staff to focus on meaningful work.
Thoughtful automation implementations boost productivity, enhance data security, reduce costs, and improve the employee experience. While basic HR information systems store personnel data, process automation entirely transforms how that information gets put to use.
This article explores the top 7 benefits of automating HR processes and provides use cases to showcase the power of automation.
1. Radically Boosts Productivity
Constant influxes of employee requests and forms create bottlenecks that hamper HR productivity. Managers submit vacation approval emails. New hires fill out piles of paperwork. Employees file tickets for payroll issues.
HR staff process these requests manually by routing documents, entering data, or corresponding via email. These fragmented systems struggle with employee growth. Each additional hire compounds complexity.
Automating repetitive tasks like new employee onboarding, benefits enrollment, leave approvals, and payroll preparation accelerates processes from weeks to hours. Software robots handle hundreds of concurrent requests without performance lag.
According to Harvard Business Review analysis, automation increases productivity of document-intensive HR workflows by over 25%. Beyond raising HR staff output, intelligent algorithms scale to support large, fast-growing workforces by removing capacity constraints.
Global bank BBVA automated over 100 discrete steps in its employee onboarding checklists, slashing processing times from 4 weeks to under 4 days. Automation enabled HR to quadruple regional headcount supporting expansion into Peru and Colombia without additional staff.
| Year | New Hires | HR Headcount |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 1,200 | 25 |
| 2019 | 5,000 | 27 |
Table 1. BBVA’s regional growth fueled by HR process automation
2. Strengthens Data Security
Paper-laden HR records expose employee information to alarming risks of loss, destruction, or unauthorized access. File rooms tempt data breaches while physical documents enable fraud such as altering employment records.
Digitization provides some safeguards over paper by facilitating data backups and platform security controls. However, the full advantages emerge through process automation.
Automation software automatically classifies and files employee documents into compliant, encrypted systems with meticulous access permissions. Advanced programs detect suspicious edits to records that may indicate compromised credentials or insider risks.
Centralizing data access controls and integrating monitoring improves HR’s governance. Automating document handling not only accelerates processes like employee exit procedures but critically ensures HR data management abides by regulations like GDPR and ISO 27001.
Multinational bank Santander automated over 560,000 annual employee transactions across onboarding, job changes and offboarding while reducing compliance violations by 11% last year.
3. Shrinks Operating Costs
While automation generates immense productivity gains, the technology also provides major cost savings that boost the bottom line. HR spends over 70% of its budget on labor according to estimates by consulting firm Mercer.
Automating high-volume employee transactions with software robots reduces headcount required for manual processing. Attending to employee queries, fixing payroll issues, maintaining leave balances, and managing personnel files requires less staff intervention.
Beyond headcount savings, intelligent automation slashes expenses for printing, postage, file storage, server infrastructure, and legacy HR platform licensing. Consolidating information systems and digitizing records prevents asset duplication while greater workflow efficiencies minimize IT costs.
KPMG found that automation helps large companies save approximately 20-30% of costs associated with typical HR paperwork and administration processes through staff and infrastructure reduction. These savings often provide ROI in under 12 months for automation software implementation and get reinvested to advance analytics capabilities.
| Process Automated | Annual Savings |
|---|---|
| Onboarding | $720,000 |
| Payroll | $240,000 |
| Performance Reviews | $560,000 |
| Audits | $160,000 |
| Total | $1.68 million |
Table 2. Cost reduction breakdown for Fortune 500 company implementing comprehensive HR process automation
4. Boosts Strategic Decision-Making
HR teams struggle analyzing data spread across fragmented systems to uncover workforce insights. Operational metrics like overtime costs, absentee trends, or divisional turnover ratios demand manually compiling reports. This delays decisions on compensation, recruiting, or development.
Automating workflows provides a foundation by tightly integrating disparate employee data into cloud platforms. This gives HR leaders comprehensive, real-time visibility into headcount, performance, and other trends through interactive dashboards instead of static reports.
Sophisticated analytics further strengthen strategic planning. Artificial intelligence detects use case-specific signals amid billions of data points. Predictive modeling enables data-driven decisions on hiring needs, retention risks, and talent requirements to support organizational growth.
The Australian government automated numerous HR processes including payroll, performance management, and learning administration for its 170,000+ employees. Automation consolidated dozens of disconnected datasets while machine learning models identified $360 million in potential annual savings from improving employee retention just 5% through better skills mapping.
5. Boosts Employee Satisfaction
Bureaucracy frustrates employees. Navigating complex HR systems to make basic requests like booking trainings, accessing policies, submitting timesheets, and managing documents brings workplace dissatisfaction for over 75% of employees according to IBM research.
HR process automation delivers consumer-grade user experiences loved by staff through user-centric design. Intuitive self-service portals empower employees to manage personal data, sign forms, submit requests, book events, and chat with virtual agents without burdening HR teams.
Automation also significantly accelerates case turnarounds. Software robots process requests fast as forms and documents get routed to appropriate parties using rules-based algorithms. Parallel approvals prevent sequential email chains that delay outcomes.
In large organizations, intelligent case management solutions use conversational interfaces to handle hundreds of concurrent employee inquiries without endless call center wait times. Chatbots resolve basic requests while ticketing systems centralize complex cases to specialists offering white-glove service.
Two years after deploying automation, leading bank DBS cut HR case resolution times by 60% and improved employee Net Promoter Scores by 30 points. Over 80% of staff requests now get addressed directly by AI-powered chatbots without human assistance.
6. Facilitates Team Collaboration
Miscommunication between HR functions like recruiting, compensation, and learning often complicates employee journeys. Collaboration gaps during pivotal workflows manifest through repetitive questions, conflicting messages, or duplicated efforts that spur frustration.
Automation software centralizes contexts, conversations, and documents across HR teams to remove silos. Shared templates ensure consistency while rules route cases to appropriate specialists based on employee profiles. Alerts and reminders sustain engagement until final resolutions.
In complex workflows like performance management or competitive compensation analysis, automation coordinates aligned objectives, transparent ratings, and data-driven decisions between HR business partners, line managers, and executives.
Multinational consumer goods conglomerate Unilever automated communication flows between HR stakeholders across goal setting, performance reviews, and compensation analysis for 40,000+ managers. Over 90% of employees now receive completed reviews on time, improving retention.
7. Enables Organizational Scalability
As growing organizations expand into new regions, make acquisitions or conduct mass hiring – HR complexity intensifies. Geographic distribution and suboptimal ratios between HR staff and total employees strains support capabilities that impact strategic growth.
The scalability of automation allows HR teams to keep pace with corporate development. Cloud-based process automation handles thousands of additional employee records, locations, or new departments without compromising efficiency or oversight.
When global bank ING acquired smaller institution NN Group with over 15,000 employees, it leveraged automation to virtually onboard acquired staff in under 3 months with just a dozen HR integration specialists. The accelerated assimilation supported a smooth transition that closed 3 months ahead of schedule.
While leaders focus on value-creation through growth, mergers, or expansion – automation gives HR teams capacity to support corporate development versus becoming an obstacle.
Bolsters Risk Management
HR holds sensitive employee information prone to security compromises or policy violations that produce compliance exposure. Keeping systems and processes compliant with regulations like HIPAA, SOX, GDPR becomes increasingly challenging amid complex, global workforces.
Automating workflows introduces guardrails. Software exceptions detect when employee information gets used improperly. Customized controls ensure HR processes follow geographic regulations and corporate policies to minimize audit violations.
Ongoing monitoring further strengthens governance. Analytics track risks like discriminatory practices or conflicts of interest during recruiting and performance reviews so issues get addressed before becoming legal liabilities or reputation damage.
Global bank HSBC automated regulatory compliance processes for leave management, disciplinary procedures, and employee restructuring across regions and languages for their 200,000+ employee base. Automation decreased audit flags by 40% over two years which signified $15 million in cost avoidance from potential European Union sanctions.
Enables Flexible Operational Models
Traditional HR processes assume employees work on-site and rely heavily on in-person interactions which restraint remote or hybrid working arrangements. Yet locations no longer limit talent acquisition, productivity, or staff collaboration.
HR process automation provides infrastructure for flexible employee management regardless of geography. Digital workflows allow remote hiring, onboarding with eSignatures, online training, automated payroll, and benefits administration across borders.
Collaboration tools also connect hybrid teams. Managers discuss goals and provide on-demand coaching without physical proximity. Automated notifications and trackers give HR leaders visibility into global operations from compliance risks to team sentiment analysis for targeted interventions that prevent turnover.
When IBM shifted 80% of its workforce to permanent hybrid and remote roles during the pandemic, it kept turnover below 4% through digital collaboration and stratified automation across HR case management, resource deployment, and location-based compliance supervision.
Unlocks Advanced Workforce Analytics
While core HR platforms aggregate personnel datasets, analyzing information across functions remains difficult. Limited reporting and dashboarding capabilities prevent predictive insights on hiring demand, attrition risks, or skills gaps that guide important workforce decisions.
Automation consolidates real-time employee data across HR systems then layers smart analytics. Data visualization uncovers trends while artificial intelligence detects use case-specific signals to power predictive modeling.
Advanced analytics guide strategic decisions around compensation benchmarking, high-performer retention tactics, tailored learning programs, optimal team construction, and more. Workforce optimization elevates HR to an analytics powerhouse from back-office business partner when bolstered by automation.
The Australian government automated dozens of HR management processes to harmonize data access then deployed AI to predict 8.5% voluntary turnover two years out. This enabled launching proactive retention initiatives like skills retraining for at-risk employees that increased employee lifetime value 19%.
- Document core HR workflows and identify pain points caused by complexity, manual effort, or limited employee visibility
- Prioritize processes creating the biggest productivity drags, compliance risks, or staff frustrations
- Select user-friendly automation software with easy no-code customization across popular HR use cases
- Start small by automating a few workflows then quantify benefits before expanding to other functions
As showcased throughout this guide, thoughtfully transforming HR operations through automation unlocks transformative potential for both human resources departments and broader enterprises.
Savings from improved productivity and lower operating costs can get reinvested to mature capabilities. Data-driven analytics guide better workforce decisions while self-service employee experiences sustain engagement and talent retention.
To explore options for upgrading core HR systems with intelligent process automation, connect with our specialists.