Elevating automation in the HR function

Embracing enterprise content management and business process automation to improve efficiency, streamline compliance and drive higher employee engagement.

From marketing to finance to customer service, most South African companies are elevating the automation of their core business processes. But human resources (HR) departments in many organisations continue to use paper-driven processes for functions from on-boarding new employees to performance reviews to compiling employment equity reports. Every day, HR professionals waste hours of their precious time finding, scanning and filing employee documents by hand.

Time spent on manual processing of employee records and other paperwork is tedious for HR professionals and could be better focused on strategic goals such as recruitment and employee engagement. Such manual HR processes are not only inefficient, but also increase the risk of data errors creeping into documents needed to comply with South Africa’s tax and labour laws.

With shrinking budgets, growing employee expectations and tougher labour and tax legal requirements, HR departments are under pressure to streamline business processes. Technologies such as enterprise content management (ECM) and business process automation (BPA) enable progressive HR departments to improve the level of service they offer employees and the business, while ensuring legal and regulatory compliance.

What is HR automation?

HR automation tools enable HR departments to build a high-functioning infrastructure that delivers a superior level of service to employees, job applicants and the business. They help HR professionals to reduce the time it takes to complete tasks — without sacrificing quality of work.

BPA is an essential part of a good ECM solution, automating time-consuming administrative tasks such as filing documents, creating new folders and transferring documents between employees. BPA software also eliminates the need for paper-specific tasks like making photocopies and gathering handwritten signatures.

Conclusion

Facing an ever-changing and increasingly complex technology and talent landscape, South African HR departments need to seek out tactics, processes and tools that will enable them to enhance their performance. For many, the answer lies in automating manual business processes that slow down the business, impair efficiency and complicate regulatory compliance.

By introducing tools such as ECM and BPA, HR departments are able to realise benefits such as better productivity, cost containment, compliance, efficient access to employee information and candidate talent information, as well as improved strategic focus.

HR is about the people in the business, and automation technology should be leveraged to better serve every colleague and manager in the business – not to replace them. Not every aspect of HR can or should be automated. Instead, automation is about enabling HR to better deliver against its mandates of acquiring and retaining the best talent, and to help colleagues to perform to their true potential.