HR automation tools can save time that can be used in ways that help grow your business. Many HR processes, while absolutely necessary, are extremely time-consuming when done manually. Hiring candidates, onboarding new employees and administering performance reviews, development opportunities and benefits can all take multiple hours if done by hand.
Worse, if done incorrectly, fixing those mistakes can take even more time, not to mention causing a lack of compliance especially when it comes to EEO hiring practices and benefits administration.
Cloud-based HR automation tools have been developed for a reason – they make those key HR processes more efficient and accurate, ultimately helping you achieve your goals and improve your company culture.
HR Automation Tools for Recruitment and Applicant Tracking
Recruiting and hiring workers is expensive with costs estimated at about $4,000 per hire. But that’s not the biggest issue with hiring right now. There is currently a worker shortage affecting nearly every industry. If you haven’t automated recruiting and hiring, you’ll be way behind the competition when it comes to snagging the best candidates.
An automated Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can help make sense of your hiring process by delivering valuable insights. It will gather intelligence from several layers, including:
- Workflows—Identify what’s working and what’s hindering you
- Targeted data—Learn where improvements can be made department-by-department
- The applicants’ experience—Improve employer brand with a simpler process
Presenting this key data to leadership will help to make actionable improvements to your recruitment process, giving you an edge even when quality candidates are few and far between.
Your HR recruiters and administrators will also reclaim countless hours once spent on manual tasks, giving them the time to focus on strategic processes that aim to improve higher-impact areas of need.
Onboarding with HR Automation Tools
When done right, onboarding can create a foundation of engagement and trust. Done poorly, it can leave a new recruit without the tools to be productive.
Now that lack of productivity is a big deal. According to Gallup, it can cost companies $9,000 in productivity lost for an employee earning $50,000 per year.
Using cloud-based HR automation tools for your onboarding process can help your newest employees get off to a great start.
Use an onboarding system that allows new employees to start this part of the process from home, before their first day on the job. A cloud-based system gives employers the ability to collect several documents from employees for legal and regulatory compliance.
This paperwork includes:
- W-4 for employees or W-9 for contractors
- I-9 Employee Eligibility Verification form
- State Tax Withholding form
- Direct Deposit form
- E-Verify system that verifies employee’s work eligibility in the United States
When new employees complete this step from home, their first day becomes less about paperwork and more about productivity. So you can use that first day to help employees start to create working relationships with their new team members and really begin to understand the responsibilities of the job and the culture of the organization.
HR Automation Tools for Performance Management
Administering performance management processes manually makes it extremely hard to track goals, manage for fair compensation evaluations or even have enough time to truly create an efficient performance management process. The time it would take to manually track performance could easily add up to hours and hours of work.
HR automation tools can help improve performance evaluations for administrators, managers and employees by automating numerous workflows, acquiring advanced analytics, sending out templated communications, providing a customized scoring system and more.
When employees feel properly evaluated and compensated, it will only build the employer brand further because you will be doing right for the workforce. Improving the performance management process is just one step into making your employer brand a gold standard in your industry. And with a tight labor market, competition will be even more fierce than in years past.
Using performance management software lets you efficiently manage your employees and help them align their goals with company goals. It’s a win-win for everyone.
HR Automation Accelerates Employee Development
With a surge in retirements and more jobs than workers, retaining the employees you currently have is more important than ever.
Training existing employees with a learning management system can be an effective strategy for recruiting hard-to-fill positions – saving you time and lost productivity. And training for increasingly complex roles with your current employees has its benefits:
- Employees are already familiar with your company culture and expectations
- Promoting from within boosts morale
- Internal hires have a shorter hire time and cost less than external recruits
- When you train, you train your way
Training employees also helps keep your workforce engaged. And a company with an engaged workforce reaps productivity benefits. According to Gallup, these companies experience:
- 41% lower absenteeism
- 70% fewer employee safety incidents
- 10% higher customer metrics
- 17% higher productivity
- 20% higher sales
- 21% higher profitability
Benefits Management is Easier with HR Automation Tools
HR administrators and employees go through a ritual every year that can be painful – benefits enrollment. Messaging can get confusing and time-consuming to relay. You go through meeting-after-meeting, trying to relay benefits facts. In addition, you have to time your communications and manually send them off to “All staff” just to remind them that Open Enrollment is happening and they better make their selections soon.
After all that, you are in charge of manually dragging and dropping employee enrollment selections; then you need to figure out which carriers they need to go to. It’s safe to say this process needs all-hands-on-deck, which depending on the size of your HR department, can effectively stymie progress to the greater goals you want to reach for the year.
A cloud-based benefits management system makes open enrollment (OE) easier for the HR team to manage and enabling employees to complete their elections is just part of successful benefits administration. As businesses look to attract and retain talented employees in today’s competitive environment, a streamlined benefits experience is critical. Employees expect to easily access their benefits, review their information and make any life-event changes on their own.
- Your Employees can compare, analyze and check plan costs prior to enrollment
- Employees can print consolidated benefit statements at any time
- Administrators can configure rules for specified benefit options to appear in employee portals based on set criteria
- Employee selections are seamlessly sent to appropriate carriers via Electronic Data Interface (EDI) transfer
- Employee Self-Service (Portal)
Arcoro’s HR Automation Tools
Arcoro offers cloud-based HR automation tools that allow you to hire, manage and grow your workforce with greater ease. Modules can be used independently or work together to provide a complete automated HR experience. Your employees will love the access from anywhere. With these tools, your HR team will have more time to focus on planning and strategy, meaning you can propel your organization more quickly towards its goals.
Want more information about how HR automation can give you a competitive edge? Get our guide, Gaining That Competitive Edge: 3 Things Construction Companies Need to know about HR Tech and Organizational Agility.
