IT & HR: It’s all about automation and simplification if you are going to be competitive CEO Insights 10-2-2018 By Jim Steinlage President & Chief Executive Officer Table of Contents Multi-prong Benefits of HR Automation The Takeaway As an HR professional, you work with multiple people throughout the recruiting and on-boarding processes. From interview to training, there’s a lot of paperwork, procedures, and management involved in bringing a new hire up to speed. Enter automation and its ability to transform HR departments and simplify the voluminous work they do. Multi-prong Benefits of HR Automation Automation not only makes your HR checklist shorter, it also gives new and current employees a more personalized and efficient work experience. Integrating technology with the employee experience can make employees feel less like “a number” and more like a valuable part of the team. Over the years, the role of HR has evolved to a place where the focus has changed from mere personnel management to strategic human resource planning. New technologies now make it possible for businesses of all sizes to address time-consuming, labor-intensive employee acquisition and management tasks in far less time than it once took. Why is it important for your HR department to embrace automation now? Because that’s what your competition is doing. In fact, 72% of employers say they expect talent acquisition roles will be automated in less than a decade. There’s no point putting off tomorrow’s inevitability today. Need more reasons to automate? Here are just six. With research suggesting that nearly 75% of an HR manager’s time is spent on administrative tasks, automating processes like time tracking, contract preparation, onboarding programs, training sessions, and more just makes sense. HR automation keeps HR free from the human errors that often lead to manual data collection processes and tasks. You can reshape the employee experience and unleash game-changing potential by hyper-personalizing training and tasks. If you have multiple places of business or have employees who work from home or other geographical locations, automation can improve workflows between them. No one likes paperwork. And the less you use, the fewer human errors you make, and the more time you free up for real teamwork. It’s also good for the planet! Automation frees you to focus on new trends and plan for the future instead of constantly putting out fires in the present. You also have more quality time to spend connecting with employees which leads to better engagement and productivity. The Takeaway Today, no HR department can exist in a vacuum. Collaboration with IT is especially crucial in implementing company-wide automation and document management solutions. While it’s true HR and IT departments have historically been less aligned, in a world where technology continues its rapid evolution, a working partnership is more important than ever. A third of HR teams are already using some sort of automation and over 40% are building mobile apps to deliver HR solutions. IT teams are central to implementing both. Implementing new HR automating technologies can dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend on repetitive tasks and get you back to focusing on what’s most important: growth. And, working together, HR and IT can help create a more efficient and effective workplace that attracts, manages, and develops the talent you need to compete. Ultimately, the efficiency you get from integrating automation puts you ahead of the competition while showing top-tier talent that your organization is open to new trends and interested in staying at the pinnacle of your industry.