Automation Meets HR: Sure-fire Shortcuts To Get Things Done

Unless you have buried yourself in offline processes for the past few years, you have probably heard that automation can be a great tool for SME success.

From lead generation to real-time marketing, slick e-commerce to prompt customer service; automation can not only make your organisation more efficient, but can even make it seem bigger than it is!

If you feel as though you might not have dabbled in the world of business automation yet, you are quite possibly using automation for more daily tasks than you realise. Like that calendar reminder to pick up milk or taxing your car online. Even setting your heating to warm up the house before you get home in the winter. Yep, that’s automation at its best.

Making day-to-day life that little bit smoother goes a long way. And automation is almost becoming an ingrained second nature for many of us with a busy schedule. So, going from automating your life admin to automating your work day should feel like natural progression.

Now, you can go one step further with efficiencies by automating your people management.

Automating HR

Surely, you can’t take the human out of human resources management? Well, the reality is, automation can take care of basic tasks so that you can be freed up to focus on the more important matters. The ones that really do require a human response.

If you’re now sat there pondering the common question of the digital age: To automate, or not to automate? Let us guide you through how, why and when you can automate your HR.

When to automate HR

1. Handling holiday requests. If you’re laden with bits of paper or emails from your employees requesting holidays, simplify this through automation and online HR software such as the HR Dept Toolkit.

2. Training your employees. Get all your training docs in one place and compile easy-to-access courses for your employees to complete. Both you and your employee can keep track of performance.

3. Sharing important documents. Save time and money on printing important documents with an online document library. Make an amend once and send an alert to all concerned.

4. Keeping track of progress. 121’s and reviews are an important part of people management. Keep records in one place and set up reminders for future meetings.

5. Delegating tasks. Emails or conversations can easily get lost. Automate task delegation online and save time searching for the – “email I sent you last week”.

When not to automate HR

1. To avoid a difficult conversation. It would be best not to try and automate a difficult conversation just because it’s an awkward assignment. We say bite the bullet with this one and make it human. And if you need a helping hand, your local HR Dept advisor can sit in on the meeting with you.

2. To dismiss an employee. Ever hear about the employee that got unfairly fired by a robot? This actually happened! Avoid any nasty claims of unfair dismissal by involving yourself in the process.

3. Recruiting the perfect match. There are many aspects of recruitment that can be automated, and we say go for it! But when it comes to hiring the perfect match for your company and team, it’s probably a good idea to meet up in person before sealing the deal.

4. Having a 121. Although reminders and records can be automated, when it comes to having a performance review or 121 with an employee, we’d advise carrying it out in person. Communication can get lost over email threads and it’d be best to see and speak to your employee when discussing their performance and progress.

If HR hassles have your round the bend, contact Digital Union’s friend HR Dept Newcastle for assistance.