Benefits from Automating Common HR Processes through RPA

Original post from https://www.cigen.com.au/cigenblog/

Because of its fundamentally transformational role in the world of business, robotic process automation is one of the main forces of change, leading the way towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Rewriting the rules for the digital age, a Deloitte report from 2017 based on the answers of 10,000 HR leaders in 140 countries, made it clear that automating common HR processes is becoming the rational trend for HR departments.

“Rewriting the rules for the digital age, a Deloitte report from 2017 based on the answers of 10,000 HR leaders in 140 countries, made it clear that automating common HR processes is becoming the rational trend for HR departments.”

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Almost half the executives of top HR firms all over the world expect that RPA deployment results in 10-20% savings not only for the HR processes, but more generally, for the overall business processes.

This makes perfect sense: when whole enterprises go digital, HR ought to ensure a place on the path to efficient digital organization.

So let’s see, what benefits do you actually get from using RPA for HR?

1. Simpler payroll

Software robots can deal with all payroll changes that customers send by email, and enter them into the SAP system in a reflex manner.

This reduces processing time by 85% and error rates to 0%, while also speeding up response times. It thus increases customer satisfaction and contributes to building a good reputation for your company.

2. More efficient employee onboarding

More efficient employee onboarding is achieved by joint usage of attended and unattended software robots. They help to reduce the processing time involved in onboarding ten times, so that all it takes to onboard a new hire is 3-4 minutes.

Moreover, since RPA is quasi error free, you no longer need to waste time error-spotting and correcting mistakes.

3. Improved career growing and learning opportunities

In the current context, when we all need to deal with the workforce-related effects of the “demographic earthquake”, i.e. the sharp decrease in labour force, companies have to ensure a workforce that is well adapted to the digital future.

This requires constant training. RPA makes training more accessible to employees, and it facilitates training delivery. Automation also serves the purpose of modernising HR functions so that they can adapt more flexibly to dynamic career demands.

4. Streamlined talent acquisition

Software robots allow keeping track of all the relevant candidates’ profiles in efficiently organised databases, and notifying them of the interview results. They thereby free the employees in HR departments to focus on the use of their communication skills for proactive hiring, and finding those candidates that are most likely to support the development of company culture.

In fact, robotic process automation in HR can be seen as a loudspeaker for your company’s trademark, which will attract elite employees.

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5. Enhanced employee experience

Robotic process automation facilitates the hiring and dismissal processes by assessing employees’ credentials and/or performance in relation with the specific requirements of each job. For instance, software robots can easily gather all the files and compare the information with the list of job requirements, which can be viewed as predefined rules that guide the selection procedure. (This is why resume screening and candidate shortlisting is a top use case of RPA in HR.)

Bots’ capacity to integrate data across a wide range of systems allows an advanced, unified approach to the employee experience, simplifying the work that they need to do. The results? Not only a direct productivity upgrade at the organisation level, but also a boost for employees’ engagement, which ultimately strengthens productivity even more.

6. Performance management

Performance management by means of RPA, in accordance with clearly spelled out rules, e.g. based on the comparison of rewards and incentives, favours the development of more efficient performance management programs.

As a consequence, the employee payment process is no longer daunted by the high risk of error and becomes significantly less time- and labour-consuming.

7. Augmenting the workforce

Augmenting the workforce is a result of joint deployment of RPA and other cognitive technologies such as machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, natural language processing, etc. The implementation of novel AI and RPA tools will assist the instruction of the employees regarding progressive approaches to the HR functions.

8. Bridging incompatible applications and platforms

HR experts must make it such that various platforms corresponding to different mergers or assets are consistent and well integrated. RPA ensures that this unification is done with less resource investment, both money- and time-wise.

This is because it sidesteps restructuring everything into a single entity by using the more effective strategy of setting up a clean communication channel between the merging applications.

Let us now go a bit along the humanistic dimension of RPA and see how exactly different HR professionals can benefit from working side by side with software robots.

Talent acquisition professionals. Automating common HR processes, such as candidate sourcing and assessment, allows them to focus more on human-to-human interaction. They now have the time to meet in person the most noteworthy candidates, or to attend talent scouting events.
Employee relations professionals. With the help of RPA, they can act proactively, to prevent, rather than to fix by trying to find out what has gone wrong.
Learning and development professionals, just like HR business partners, have the chance to be part of business-unit exclusive projects that would have been beyond their capacities prior to RPA.
Benefits professionals will be able to take their hands off of health and wellness program administration and invest more resources in prosperity initiatives.

But which processes are amenable to automation in HR?

As usual, they are rule based, repetitive, high volume, and dealing with digital data. They can be:

strategic: organisation design management, employee satisfaction management
having to do with talent management: career management and succession planning, onboarding, recruitment
operational: employee data administration, payroll management

Many HR processes are streamlined and more productive when being dealt with by software robots.

Conclusion

Improved accuracy, shorter processing times, and the corresponding labour savings are RPA-related effects that, in turn, boost both employee and customer satisfaction. In fact, RPA for HR appears to be a win-win situation, both for your employees (who can allocate more time to value-added activities) and for your customers (who will notice higher accuracy rates as well as quicker turnarounds).

The deployment of RPA in the human relations departments will make a significant contribution to harmonising two sets of strategies: for talent acquisition, and for talent management.