If you work in human resources, the thought of business automation specific to HR might sound threatening. But it’s actually a great tool for the entire team and something you’ll want to embrace. Automation for HR departments is here and it’s growing. In fact, it’s estimated that over 35% of businesses are already using some form of automation today, and over 65% expect to start implementing it within the next year. Rather than worry that automation will boot someone out of a job, you’ll want to team up with the many automation technology options and get on board with the functionality of this amazing resource.

Businesses need a strong HR department in order to thrive in any industry. Competent decision makers are crucial, and decisions and processes made in the HR department will impact the whole company. Automation delivers accurate and efficient results, but there are many instances where a live person will always remain the most effective approach.

Functions that Shouldn’t be Automated

The goal of automation isn’t to eliminate jobs but to minimize particular functions that are considered inefficient, risky to the employee or staff members, or problematic due to a high likelihood of human error. Mundane and repetitive tasks can be reduced so that your employees can focus a greater amount of their time on what’s more important to the business. HR has been and will always be an important division in your business, and employees can remain valuable in this role. Critical functions of HR that are beneficial to leave to an actual person include the following items:

  • Employee relations. Actual employees should be available for creating and keeping employee relationships. Having a staff member available for questions and communication provides comfort to employees and creates an open, authentic work atmosphere.
  • Hiring and recruiting management. Although you can automate some processes to this, such as a search for a candidate, you’ll still want the actual hiring steps and weeding-out process to a live person. There’s a lot that’s subjective about hiring and recruiting, and having a thoughtful, goal-oriented person handling this process will be helpful.
  • Performance monitoring and assessment. There’s only so much that can be tracked automatically when it comes to what your employee is doing on the job. Assessing an employee’s output is something that requires a bit of a hands-on approach. An HR employee can automate some of this with tracking details, but their oversight and attention to details are valuable in this category.
  • Business strategy discussions and organizational effectiveness. Automating processes in your business is great but discussing goals and changes within your organization will need to be left to the actual employees rather than AI. After all, human interaction is a benefit for employees, and you don’t want to get too sterile in your automation journey.

It will be advantageous for HR employees to learn how to work with automation services rather than shy away from them. We know it can be intimidating at first, but with some training and application, most employees see quickly how beneficial automation is. Please check out Part 2 of this series to see the many ways automation can help your business and your employees.