The ROI of HR Automation Will Shock You

Automation has grown dramatically across many industries in the past several years, including human resources. Using automation is not just a way to free up time for more important issues. It can also ensure that your team is not allowing anything to fall through the cracks and that you have access to information and tools that your employees alone cannot provide. Ultimately, the ROI of HR automation turns out to be much larger than you think.

What is HR Automation?

HR automation is the process of using software to take over some of the tedious, repetitive tasks that an organization’s human resources department has to perform on a regular basis, from record-keeping to recruitment, benefits management, and more. 

HR automation helps free up the HR team's time to focus on more complex tasks that actually require a human touch, from dealing with employees who may need additional support to make critical decisions about the needs of the company. 

Types of HR Tasks and Functions That Can Be Automated

There are a variety of HR tasks that can be automated, thanks to the latest technology. They include:

• Employee record management: including keeping up with everything from government compliance information to employee assessments

• Recruiting: including everything from a basic reference check to job-based surveys. Crosschq360, for example, can provide a detailed report regarding potential candidates to see if they are a good job match with rich data based on both candidate and reference assessments. 
  
  
• Onboarding from collecting relevant information from new hires to ensuring that they're prepared for their jobs. With Crosschq Analytics, for example, you can get a better look at exactly how your new hires are likely to perform and what support they are likely to need on the job. 

• Tax forms and submission
  
  
• Benefits information
  
  
• Tracking health and safety information: from pushing out critical updates to ensuring that employees are meeting necessary security measures. 

HR Automation Trends

HR automation is growing rapidly. While it is always important to consider what features will work best for your business, taking a look at the latest trends can help you determine which decisions will work best for your specific needs. 

• Networking: Connecting with a broad range of potential employees is easier than ever with the latest automation technology. Crosschq Recruit, for example, connects employers to a wide candidate referral network, which can help you find the best potential employees for your open positions with an easy, effective strategy.
  
  
• Training is moving virtual: Automated training and onboarding ensure that every member of the team comes in on the same page, with all the information they need to be successful in a new position. Furthermore, automated onboarding helps free up team members so that they can focus on their current job responsibilities, not on the needs of a new employee.
  
  
• More self-service: Many basic functions are moving toward self-service. Employees want to be able to access their own insurance information and take care of changes without having to go through HR. Employees also frequently benefit from being able to manage their own schedules with virtual, automated scheduling software.
  
  
• Increased efficiency: Automation helps ease some of the burdens of changing human resource laws which, in many companies, has increased the number of employees who need to be on hand to address those challenges.
  
  
• Shifting support: Increasingly, employers need to manage not only their employees' work experiences but their employees' life experiences. Employees now expect that their employers will support them regardless of where their journeys take them.
  
  

HR Automation Tips

Are you ready to start automating many of the HR processes within your industry? Make sure you incorporate these tips into your plan.

• Look for solutions that improve the overall employee experience.  Focus on both the experience of employees on the HR team and employees around your business. You should have streamlined, easy-to-use platforms that are intuitive and deliver benefits for your employees.
  
  
• Start small. Try out one new platform or program before you introduce another. There can be a learning curve when dealing with new programs or automation. However, when you roll them out steadily, you'll discover that your employees are more able to adapt. 
  
  
• Monitor the success of your platforms and share that information with your team members. Make sure they know what to expect from the platform and are familiar with how it's working.
  
  
• Make full use of the information provided by your platforms. The better you get to know candidates and employees alike, the better you can deliver on that critical employee experience.

The ROI of HR Automation: It May Surprise You!

Automating HR tasks can have a higher ROI than you think. Across multiple industries, automation delivers an ROI of around 200%. The measurement of specific return on your automation investment, however, may not just be in concrete dollars. You may also see returns in other areas of your business. 

HR automation can help you identify the best potential candidates for your open positions.

There are some things that software simply cannot do for you, including actually interviewing candidates and helping you make the best choice about the one you need for your organization. However, automation can improve the employee selection process and help you make more informed hiring decisions with data. 

Take a look at Crosschq’s solutions on the Talent Intelligence Cloud™ for example.

• Pre-Hire - Crosschq 360: Conduct automated pre-hire reference checks, which will give you more insights into your candidates to help you make sure you've made the best possible choices

• Sourcing - Crosschq Recruit: This opt-in candidate referral network can help connect you to a broader range of candidates than your organization might normally be able to access. With Crosschq Recruit, you can decrease the cost needed to acquire top talent in your industry – and check our comprehensive candidate profiles to get a better look at whether candidates really have the full set of skills needed to fit well in your open position. 
  
  
• Quality of Hire - Crosschq Analytics: This can help predict just how well candidates will do in your open positions--and help you monitor performance as those candidates grow with your company.
  
  

Finding the right candidate for your company is critical. Onboarding a new hire correctly can take as much as a year after the candidate joins your company, and a candidate certainly will not reach peak productivity for the first several weeks or even months, depending on the responsibilities you need that candidate to complete. 

As many as 17% of employees will leave a company before their first month is out, and even more, will quit within the first six months. That can cost you an estimated $4,128 or more, (SHRM Human Capital Benchmarking Report), depending on the type of role you're trying to fill and how long you have to look for the ideal candidate. 

With automated HR processes like the ones offered by Crosschq, on the other hand, you can decrease the number of employees who are likely to leave your company during those early days, and choose, instead, the ones who are likely to be a great job match. 

HR automation can help you save money through the onboarding process.

How much time does your team invest in onboarding a new hire? Your HR team may need to spend 10-15 hours working with a new employee to get them onboarded and up to speed. An employee with skills gaps or who learns slower may spend longer adapting to the new business and may require more individualized attention.

Automated onboarding, on the other hand, can help you save a great deal of money on each candidate that comes through your doors. Not only can you use Crosschq Analytics to get a better idea of what skills your new employees may have both before they come through your doors and as they integrate with your company, but you can also use an automated solution to help improve their overall learning and strategies. 

Instead of having to oversee it directly, your HR team can simply check on progress and see how employees are moving through those training modules and what they may need in order to be successful in the future. 

Scheduling and payroll systems can reduce strain on your employees.

These days, HR employees do not have to manage most employee scheduling and payroll tasks directly. With automated payment solutions, you can keep track of when employees have worked, any claims that they've made for reimbursement, and other critical elements of payroll, and then push out those checks automatically. 

In addition, those systems can help manage to schedule and decrease the stress on HR employees. Instead of sitting down over a list of scheduling conflicts and requests for time off, HR employees can simply let team members put those items into the system. As a result, team members can request the time they need off, and HR can either approve or deny it, all without excess stress.

Most automated HR solutions, in fact, are designed to reduce stress for those key team members and put them in a better position to manage the more personal challenges that employees may bring to them each day. As a result, they're better able to provide for employee needs, and, in turn, you'll have more overall satisfied employees. 

Those satisfied employees are more likely to stick with your business, feel engaged at work, and ultimately increase their productivity, all of which can have immense benefits to your business that can be difficult to measure directly.

Using automated HR solutions like the ones offered by Crosschq is an excellent way to streamline many of your processes and let your HR team focus on other, more important elements of your daily responsibilities.

Check out our free demo today to learn more about how Crosschq can benefit your business.