Most bustling HR departments have one thing in common: They rely heavily on manual processes and administrative tasks for high-stakes business processes. By hand, they process everything from managing resumes, spreadsheets, sensitive employee data, and contracts to any number of forms and agreements required. Enter HR automation: HRIS (human resources information systems) which make it easy to securely log information accessible to the HR team.

Automation replaces time-consuming, repetitive tasks that require close attention to detail, often leading to burnout. Human error from burnout is counterproductive and sets the process back even further. 

With an automated system, you can decide what requires a hard copy and what HR functions can be completed in real-time digitally. This article will explore how the digital transformation of manual tasks can empower the whole HR team.

What Is HR Automation?

Automation connects your HR workflow and provides seamless performance management and recruitment processes. It prevents the back and forth of printing documents or hunting down relevant stakeholders. 

The time-saving benefits quickly add up over time by bolstering routine activities with an intelligent platform to do the heavy lifting. 

It's not about robots taking over jobs and eliminating the human touch, but rather eliminating the grunt work so HR managers can be even more effective and meaningful in the ways they support employees.

Sending new team members their required documents to digitally sign provides a pleasant employee onboarding experience. Relevant documents are accessible at their fingertips and can be submitted often without locating a printer. This means you can get new hires in the seat quicker without getting hung up on time-wasting enrollment obstacles.

HR Processes That Can Be Automated

Not all HRIS systems are created equally, but Pulpstream has made an automated system for HR professionals simple with a no-code platform. This means you can get up and running without much help from the IT department.

It may sound too good to be true, but there are many ways that automation tools can improve your workflow.

No-code automation software like Pulpstream fills any communication gaps and streamlines processes such as: 

  • Employee benefits: Ensuring that your team has access to adequate health care support is essential to everyone. Automate notifications for when new employees become eligible. Rely on HR automation with peace of mind to support benefits administration and enrollment with a few clicks.
  • Onboarding processes: Easily provide confidentiality agreements, nondisclosures (NDAs), and other forms to new hires and store them away securely once receiving them back. HR software can also play a key role in employee engagement by tracking personal training requirements and employee performance.
  • Leave of absence requests: Whether it's due to maternity leave, disability, a health condition, dependent care, or another federally protected leave cause, you can centralize required leave of absence forms for compliance, automatically generate the necessary documents, and track requests.
  • Health and safety inspections: The health and safety of employees is one of the things HR managers care about most. Manual data entry for scheduling these necessary safety inspections can lead to missed appointments, which can be detrimental to compliance. Automating the checks and providing inspectors with Pulpstream access means all relevant data is centrally recorded, so you always have your finger on the pulse of the workplace.
  • Complaints: Having the required documents at your fingertips can assist HR staff with decision making. Manual paperwork requires more time to compile the document to review complaints. Pulpstream provides offline access in-app even when the team is working remotely or abroad. When resolutions are reached efficiently and discretely, it sends the right message to your team.
  • Disciplinary processes: How you handle this sensitive procedure will directly affect employee retention. Consider using HR automation to keep the disciplinary process transparent and routine across multiple team members and groups.  When you normalize the method and outline the steps of what they can expect, it takes some of the emotion out of it. This benefits everyone in moving forward on the right foot.

These are just a few ways that HR automation can support your team

4 Unexpected Benefits of HR Automation?

HR automation: happy team high-fiving each other

Saving time isn't the only benefit when it comes to hitting the ground running with automated HR systems. Since many of the benefits are less obvious, here's a few of the unexpected perks of having a tight digitized process to support human resources management.

1. Better Employee Experience

Employees feel more productive and happy when their needs are being diligently looked after, whether it's having a company facilitate benefits claims efficiently or being able to hand over signed contracts from their laptop instead of snail mail.

It gives employees the sense that the company is forward-thinking, accommodating, and organized from start to finish. Even when offboarding a former employee, having an easy, streamlined process is beneficial to both the employee and company brand.

2. Empowerment from Self-Service Process

While every office has a chain of command, it feels a lot better to move through approvals and appraisals without too much friction. 

It also makes everyone's job a lot easier when information is consolidated and accessible from a central location versus having to go to multiple departments or rely on colleagues to get you what's needed to complete a task.

3. A New Level of Data Entry 

HR automation can provide intelligent data that helps with business processes and predictions. Knowing that the information you're documenting could lead to improved outcomes for the team helps you be more productive. 

Seeing the impact of your work can alleviate the burnout that happens from filling out forms that eventually land in a filing closet somewhere and feel far removed from the practicality of the business.

4. More Time to Get Creative

When you eliminate the redundant, time-consuming tasks that fill an HR manager's day, it allows for more breathing space to get creative about everyday business problems that can lead to better effectiveness. 

In an SHRM interview with co-author Ravin Jesuthasan of "Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work," he says, "The key is emphasizing the more creative and human aspects of work. These are skills that can't be automated but can be augmented to further increase their value to the organization." 

That might mean the HR team brainstorms the ways to use automation to create a ranking system to prioritize tasks. Any tasks that require personal attention or high-touch get responded to first. Most HRIS systems are customizable, so you can develop strategies to support your individual business and team.

Powerful Automation at Any Level

The Pulpstream Platform

The access that HR automation provides from onboarding to offboarding is unmatched by outdated legacy systems. The data that you accumulate doesn't collect dust in a cabinet. Instead, the data works for you, helping to improve decision-making.

While change can be intimidating, it can also mean exciting things for workplace efficiency, employee experience, and overall job satisfaction. No matter the business level, every member of the HR team will be grateful to get things done in a quicker, more secure way. Satisfy your curiosity with a tailored backstage pass on how the Pulpstream platform can supercharge your tasks with our demo.