There are a limited number of hours in a work day and of those hours, a significant amount can be attributed to manual, lengthy administrative tasks that keep any office running smoothly. While critical, the way those tasks are performed, manually, does not directly feed into the organization’s productivity. Those tasks can range from manually signing in or out of a ledger, following up on administrative things via email or in-person, or more.
HR ends up doing a bulk of such important but inefficient work, so let’s look at how automating their daily grind can help them and the workforce in general.
The solution to improving efficiency
Productivity is just one side of the coin; efficiency is the other. Understanding how to extract the most from your resources (time, cost or person-hours) is equally as important as the amount of work being done. And wouldn’t you know it, the key to efficiency can be summed up in one word: automation.
Human resources work involves a lot of communication, data and coordination to execute flawlessly day in, day out. That is work with a lot of time overhead, and thus something worth looking into first when considering the efficiency of a workplace.
There are various HR solutions available that can help attain that baseline level of automation to improve efficiency. Increasingly, modern solutions such as PeopleSonic are going cloud based, while also providing an integrated, end-to-end solution. Let’s take a look at how these HR products can help automate repetitive work and boost the efficiency of employees.
The Advantages of Automation
Significant Time Savings
HR tasks such as payroll management and certain core functions such as employee data management, if conducted using ‘typical’ processes, can be incredibly time-taking and error prone. Given how integral both HR functions are, it is essential to remove human error from the processes, while also speeding them up. Automating these processes also ensures that employees are happier – no one wants payroll issues!
Reduced Communication Lead Time
Functions such as leave management, or tracking employee presence in the office require some form of communicative processes, whether it be email, text or phone call. This obviously presents obvious issues: The communication doesn’t happen in a timely manner, isn’t responded to immediately, or just gets lost in transits – phone signal strength still remains an issue in many regions.
All this means that the lead time associated with the aforementioned processes is unacceptably high, especially if HR spends half their day chasing down the necessary information (or if employees aren’t able to reach busy HR personnel).
Automation, especially those like PeopleSonic, which are powered by the cloud and accessible everywhere and on every platform, reduce that lead time drastically, while also allowing both HR and employees to communicate their attendance or leave status in a timely, easy-to-access manner.
Speed, with Accuracy
With any task or activity, we’re often given the old adage that one must sacrifice speed for accuracy, or vice versa. A modern, fully integrated HR solution offers the third, and best, option: Speed and accuracy.
With human error and manual paperwork removed from the equation, HR functions require minimal redoing, while also completing faster. That directly translates to greater efficiency, not just for HR, but for the entire workplace.
The move to an automated HR management solution seems like a no-brainer, yet many businesses out there haven’t still not adopted newer technologies to not only optimize their workplaces, but save their employees from the drudgery of repetitive, manual tasks.