Five Smart Ways To Streamline Your HR Workflow

Working in human resources can be a gratifying and varied career. At the same time, working in a busy HR department also makes for long days with a seemingly unending stream of tasks to complete. As a result, HR professionals may become overworked, stressed, and even burnt out. 

The good news is that all those problems can be avoided or resolved with the right tools to help streamline HR workflows across different department levels. In this article, we examine why making HR processes more efficient matters. Plus, we introduce you to the most innovative tools to help your team work more effectively. 

The Importance of Streamlining Your HR Workflow for Efficiency

Human resources is one of the most varied business areas and carries high responsibility. HR teams are an integral part of the recruitment process, and they generally accompany company employees from the moment a prospect gets in touch about a vacancy until the day they leave. 

For those reasons, HR tends to attract well-organized and naturally efficient people. Despite those natural abilities, it’s possible for HR professionals to become overwhelmed, especially when they are being pulled in too many directions at once with too little support. 

The consequences of having overworked HR staff can be severe. Stressed HR managers may be unable to run a significant recruitment drive as efficiently. They may also overlook or struggle to identify the best candidates for a vacancy. Plus, when HR teams become trapped in repetitive and time-consuming work, they have less time to spend developing and supporting the company’s existing team. As a result, efficiency across the entire operation suffers. 

Streamlining an HR team’s daily workflow helps combat task overload and allows individuals to work smarter. As a result, the individuals and their support staff and co-workers across all departments benefit. 

5 Ways to Streamline HR Workflows Across the Business

Streamlining HR workflows means different things for different businesses. Before embarking on a full-on streamlining exercise and subscribing to various tools to enable smarter working for your HR team, analyze your existing workflows.  

Talk to your team and ask their opinion of where they are losing time. Which processes are receiving too little attention, and where is that attention going instead? Are there common bottlenecks or simple administrative tasks that take away the team’s time from more important work? Answering these questions will quickly allow you to see where the potential for streamlining and increased efficiency is most significant. 

Below, we highlight some of the most common areas affecting HR teams across the globe. Consider using these as a guideline when interviewing your teams. 

1. Automate Common HR Tasks

No matter how senior a person’s position is in a company, there is a good chance that part of their day is spent completing mundane, repetitive tasks. Identify and replace these tasks with AI automation to free up time for more creative, strategic work. 

One way of thinking about those tasks – and your entire day – is to ask yourself what part of your day is creating the most significant impact instead of simply keeping you busy. Taking that approach will highlight the tasks that are merely a drain on your resources without creating value. Those are the tasks to automate. 

2. Utilize Digital Signature Technologies and Go Paperless

Recruitment is one of the biggest tasks HR departments deal with daily. As part of the process, team members handle contracts, including the main work agreement between the company and its employees. When additional arrangements, such as non-disclosure agreements, share allowances, and other benefits, are added, new employees need to sign many documents. 

Traditionally, these contracts required a pile of paper and numerous original signatures. That’s why HR professionals are turning to platforms that allow them to upload contracts and other documents as PDF documents. From there, existing and prospective employees can access the files and add digital signatures where necessary.

Once completed, your company’s HR team can download and save the files, including signatures. The process is faster, easier, and more environmentally friendly by avoiding printing large amounts of paper. 

3. Optimize Data Analytics for HR Decision Making

HR is indeed a ‘people business.’ However, that does not mean that data analytics have nothing to contribute to streamlining workflows. Data analytics can help handle some of the most mundane tasks that leave no time for face-to-face interaction. 

Data analytics can show your team how much time is spent on hiring new employees and your current turnover rate in individual departments. Analytical tools also make payroll expenses obvious and allow HR teams to understand the healthcare costs for individual employees. All these insights will enable you to make better decisions for the business. 

4. Embrace Cloud-Based HR Systems

Gone are the days when companies needed to create space for entire server rooms. Modern businesses take advantage of highly sophisticated, Cloud-based HR systems. 

What can those systems do better? Thanks to well-designed dashboards and summaries, they usually give the company a better overview of the process in question. Compare that to a desk covered in papers spread out in front of you, and it becomes easy to see the difference. 

Cloud-based tools require little upfront investment and scale quickly as a business grows. 

5. Optimize Employee Self-Service Portals

Do you need to do more for your employees? This may sound like a strange question, primarily as HR teams are tasked with handling employees and their requests. But ask yourself whether there are questions that employees could answer for themselves through self-service platforms. 

Many routine queries about benefits and pay systems or administrative tasks such as address and direct debit updates do not require a team member’s input. Making these services available online saves time and allows your team to concentrate on more complex tasks. 

Conclusion

Human resource is a people-focused department, no doubt. However, using technology strategically to take care of mundane, repetitive tasks allows HR teams to streamline their workflows. It frees up time to spend on those tasks that truly require human input. 

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