A Guide to HR Workflow Automation

Every organization needs to maintain a robust process infrastructure, especially process-heavy departments like HR that have an enormous impact on the organization’s bottom line. Manual HR workflow management is cumbersome and time-intensive.

Even today, several repetitive administrative tasks are dragging down the efficiency of HR management. Research claims that HR leaders spend 3-4 hours per day on administrative tasks. These manual process management techniques create inefficiencies and productivity drops in HR departments.

HR was established primarily to take care of an organization’s most vital customers—employees. However, all the archaic processes and manual approaches prevent HR leaders from focusing on high-value activities. So, it’s high time that organizations work on retrieving the precious time their HR staff invests in mundane, repetitive tasks.

In a process-heavy sector like HR, optimizing the workflows is the first step in HR process improvement. Here’s all you need to know about HR workflow automation.

What are HR workflows?

HR workflows are the set of predictable and repetitive tasks within any HR process. This means that before an item begins the workflow, you know exactly what path it should take. HR process workflows are set up to handle an unlimited number of items going through them. Each HR workflow has its own approval rules, fulfilment tasks, and process alerts. 

HR workflow management can speed up HR processes and improve their efficiency without compromising on security.

What is HR workflow management?

Most organizations follow the document-driven approach to manage their HR processes and procedures. Any approval or request must pass through several hierarchies to be processed. Although these checkpoints reduce the decision-making speed, it ensures that the decision meets the best interests of the organization.

Proper workflow management is the key to longevity in the business landscape. Without workflow optimizations, HR processes will never be efficient.

Benefits of HR workflow automation

“To truly unleash the potential of HR, we must get back the 12 hours a week that are lost unnecessarily to endless, mundane tasks”

-Jen Stroud, HR evangelist and transformation consultant, ServiceNow

HR workflow automation will eliminate the existing complexities in business processes by transforming them into an automated structure. The approvals and requests that were once manually handled will be redesigned and executed effortlessly through automated workflows.

Automating manual, repetitive HR workflows like recruitment, employee onboarding, and performance appraisals using an all-in-one HR suite like Kissflow HR Cloud can improve process accuracy and speed up the process flow considerably. Additionally, implementing an efficient HR software can also boost the productivity and efficiency of HR staff.

Benefits of using HR workflow software

Automated HR workflows fulfill unique needs of the organization, while offering an array of options to address multi-tiered demands of HR processes.

Automated HR workflows:

• Reduce errors and cut costs
• Bridge process gaps
• Save time and improve productivity
• Enhance process efficiency
• Boost employee morale
• Increase profitability

Use cases for HR workflow automation

The rising demands for digitization have made workflow automation the perfect solution for eliminating inefficiencies in HR processes.

Here are a few complex HR workflows that can be redesigned with hr automation.

1. Employee onboarding:

By optimizing the onboarding process, new hires can complete and sign their paperwork electronically. Workflow automation takes care of sending automated notifications to all stakeholders involved in the process to keep them informed. Every step of the process is processed accurately and consistently without stressing out the new hires and the HR team.

2. Leave request

The painstakingly long process of time-off management is perfect for automation. Traditionally, vacation requests involve back and forth emails, sifting through huge spreadsheets, and deciding whether to approve the request. Automating the administrative tasks associated with leave management can accelerate the time-off process substantially.

3. Employee information management

The size of employee data grows with the business–managing it manually will be more difficult after a point. By automating the process of creating and managing employee information, manual errors can be reduced, and data retrieval becomes easy. The mishandling of confidential employee information can be prevented with HR workflow automation.

4. Exit checklist

When it comes to employee offboarding, consistency and accuracy are crucial. These two parameters can take a hit when the process is completely manual or paper-based. Although paper checklists work, you can not rely on them alone. Steps can be skipped, and exit checklists can be misplaced. On the other hand, an automated HR workflow will validate every step of the way, ensure compliance, and give HR managers a peace of mind.

Project planning and execution

Manual workflow management is not just expensive–it is also inconsistent. To reduce the potential for errors and reduce the huge cost-factor associated with manual paper-pushing, organizations need to optimize their workflows. However, before starting to look for workflow management solutions, it is essential to identify the existing problems.

• Evaluate current workflows
• Document the problems in the workflow
• List out the technology tools used to alleviate the problems
• Figure out the areas that cause slow down or delay

Once you identify the pain points in your current workflow, start your search for the right HR software. The perfect HR workflow automation software will provide a single platform to automate, monitor, and manage all HR related workflows. It will shift the focus of HR leaders from mundane administrative tasks to high impact tasks like HR strategy.

Automate your HR workflows with Kissflow HR Cloud

Businesses can save time, cut costs, shorten process cycle, and maintain consistency with automated HR workflows. Kissflow HR Cloud comes with an extensive range of ready-to-use templates to automate every HR workflow from recruitment and onboarding to offboarding. 

Kissflow HR Cloud adapts to evolving business needs in real-time, extending organizations the ability to configure rule-based, dynamic workflows all the while maintaining an audit of changes that can be reversed.  Empower your HR team by streamlining the HR process workflow using an intuitive HR Cloud. 

Streamline all your core HR processes with an intuitive HR cloud that enforces business rules, provides role-based access, and ensures process transparency. Not ready to take the leap without looking at the product? Sign up for a free guided demo of Kissflow HR Cloud and see easy it is to untangle your broken HR workflows!