HR decision makers spend an average of 12 hours each week – equivalent to 30% of a typical 40-hour work week – on routine tasks such as answering calls, responding to emails and updating spreadsheets. But the more time HR team members spend on administrative tasks, the less time they spend on strategic work to help the company grow and improve.
How can your HR department cut back time spent on manual, administrative tasks? By partnering with an integrated hiring and talent management provider, which can automate many HR processes, saving your business time and money. Below, we’ve outlined several examples of tasks that can be automated using the right hiring and talent management system.
Weed Out Unqualified Job Applicants
Your HR team and hiring managers likely spend a significant amount of time reading through resumes, cover letters and other background information each time you have a job opening. You might even set up several phone interviews only to realize a few minutes into the call that the candidate isn’t a fit.
To avoid spending time on applicants who aren’t a fit for your business, and instead focus time and resources on quality candidates, follow a standardized hiring process that includes prescreen surveys. With prescreen surveys, once an application is submitted, the applicant will receive an automated survey that can gauge his or her fit for the role. We’ve found 40 percent of applicants don’t even bother to complete the survey – meaning only the most engaged candidates who truly want to work for your business take the time to fill out the survey. Once complete, the surveys are then automatically scored, so only the strongest applicants get moved to the candidate stage of the hiring process.
Move to Paperless Onboarding
A recent survey found that 70 percent of corporate managers think employee onboarding is frustrating, while more than half said that it takes 10 or more interactions across an average of five departments to prepare for a new employee’s first day. Not only does this cause productivity to decline, but it can also cause new employees’ engagement to take a hit. If a new employee is sitting in the HR office for most of his or her first day, or interacting with five different departments to get the information they need, they’re likely to lose some of the enthusiasm they had when they walked in the door.
Paperless onboarding enables new employees to start contributing to the company on the first day, rather than spending hours filling out paperwork. And it saves your HR team from repeating the same onboarding tasks each time a new employee is hired. Once an employee accepts a job offer, your hiring and talent management platform can facilitate paperless onboarding in the weeks leading up to the employee’s start date. Onboarding tasks that can be completed ahead of time include: signing the employee handbook, filling out direct deposit information for automated payroll, completing tax forms, and filling out benefits paperwork.
Centralize All Talent Management Data
Your business likely has different systems in place for onboarding, taxes, benefits administration, hourly time tracking and time off tracking, among other HR processes. But one of the main drawbacks of separate HR systems is they don’t interact with one another, meaning your HR team will need to manually update information across systems, which takes time and can pose a risk for human error.
By instead centralizing all HR records in an integrated hiring and talent management system, you can cut back on manual tasks for both your HR and finance departments. For example, if an employee changes his or her benefits election or adjusts tax withholdings, the change will automatically be reflected on the next payroll, rather than your HR team needing to manually cross-check and ensure all information is accurate.
Transition Simple Tasks to Employees
Are employees constantly approaching your HR or finance team asking for information such as tax forms or pay stubs? With the right talent management system in place, employees can have this information at their fingertips, rather than your HR team needing to manually fetch this information. For example, an employee might need several pay stubs or employment verification to apply for an apartment. Paystubs are easily accessible for employees in a talent management platform, saving your HR and finance department from such a routine task.
Your HR team is a critical part of your business and should be focusing on strategic tasks instead of manual job applicant reviews or payroll updates. For more information on choosing the right partner to reduce manual HR tasks and run your business more efficiently, download our eBook, “Unlocking a Unified Look at Your Hiring and Talent Management Systems.”
