The HR process has always posed a significant drain on time and resources within organizations. As companies experience rapid growth, particularly beyond the initial breakthrough phase, aligning with this progress becomes a formidable task. This challenge is particularly pronounced for HR teams.
However, a promising avenue toward cultivating a more engaging work environment has emerged with the integration of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in HR operations.
The initial big step was to move from conventional Excel sheets to systems that could integrate with the HCM suite, ESS portal, and mobility. But by automating an increasing array of manual tasks, RPA liberates HR teams to engage in high-value endeavors that can propel the business forward. In this blog, we will discover the need for RPA in HR and how it can benefit enterprises.
Why RPA in HR?
Most of the HR work is carried out manually on spreadsheets which makes it the best candidate for automation. A few tasks that can be automated are employee onboarding, manually keying in the potential candidate information from new hire Excel reports into different systems, for example, requesting laptops/desktops, seat allocation, and software licenses.
Once automated, these tasks’ completion time will be reduced to seconds from hours and reduce cost and manual intervention. In fact, it is much easier to make changes to automated tasks than to manual processes, and that too, without any probability of introducing errors. Also, it is easy for other teams and departments to adopt the process changes.
By implementing RPA in human resources, HR practice can look forward to improvements in their HR data management & reporting, HR process flow, functionality, and employee experience.
As per the report, the HR software market is expected to reach 33.57 billion by 2028 (from 15.59 billion in 2020, a growth rate of 10%).
Moreover, Companies that made the switch to an HR Process automation system reported 90% time savings on administrative tasks. With these enormous benefits of HR process automation coming on the table it’s truly time for enterprises to embrace the new wave of technologies.
How to Start with HR Process Automation?
One of the significant challenges that cannot be ignored by the HR department is that there are various technological skills required by the counterpart who would work with bots. Working with bots requires an interdepartmental approach. Varied skills are essential to working with bots and will have to be cross-trained; HR Professionals will need to know how to handle these various systems.
People working with RPA as tools need to understand not only functional but also technical details to an extent. Also, they need to have sharp analytical and problem-solving skills to analyze the challenges that appear from various angles. Working with robots might seem pretty hard, especially because both technical and soft skills are required. However, with the selection of the right tool for RPA, the technical understanding requirement can be minimized to a negligible level allowing you to concentrate only on the functional aspect of the process to be automated.
[Also Read: Conversational AI- Oomphing Up HR Digitization Factor]
Given the need for HR professionals to ensure smooth integration of men and machines, HR must also upgrade their understanding of technology and start engaging in constructive conversations with the technical team working at the forefront of this emerging new technology.