Robotic Process Automation: How Automation Improves Efficiency In The HR Department

People remain a success factor for companies, also in digitization. Just as Human Resource Management supports recruiting skilled workers, Robotic Process Automation can help automate repetitive and error-prone activities.

Recruiting new employees, onboarding, payroll, training, further education, compliance reporting, and much more – the list of tasks in Human Resources Management (HR) is usually long. And in times of a shortage of skilled workers and increasing labor law regulation, this department is becoming increasingly important. At the same time, in the face of global competitive pressure, companies are always required to increase their efficiency by reducing time and costs – this applies in particular to administration. Robotic Process Automation, the automation of processes using software robots, offers a way out of this dilemma.

Robotic Process Automation: Automated Payroll Accounting

In addition to demanding tasks that require human decision-making skills, the work of HR also includes many repetitive, time-consuming, and error-prone activities. Robotic Process Automation can help free HR staff from the latter to focus on the former. And that is by no means a future scenario – the automated processing of payroll is an existing example that shows how RPA can be used for efficient and effective personnel management today and in the future.

For example, how can the previously manual and paper-based payroll accounting and payslip management of a manufacturing company with several thousand employees be automated? Instead of manually collecting and entering data, software robots automatically create the payslips from the employee and contract data stored in the HR system and make them available in digital form.

To allow the employees to access the new payslips as easily and conveniently as possible, they can be made available on a smartphone via a special portal. The result of process automation using RPA: saved working time that would otherwise have flowed into the manual creation of payslips, greater transparency thanks to the full audibility of RPA, and avoidance of data transmission errors, which can easily arise with manual input.

Robotic Process Automation: Automated Recruiting Of Specialists

However, an even more important aspect of HR work comes into play even before payroll – namely, when recruiting and onboarding new employees. Finding qualified specialists and quickly familiarizing them is a key factor for many companies today in terms of their growth and competitiveness. Does a technology company, for example, need highly specialized IT specialists? It isn’t easy to find a suitable replacement if an employee leaves the company. The problem is that the notice period for employees is often 30 days, but it can take between 90 and 120 days to find a specialist with comparable expertise and experience. This creates gaps in the system where important positions are either not filled or by insufficiently qualified persons.

How can robotic process automation make it easier to find skilled workers and accelerate their onboarding? Software robots search career networks and platforms for business contacts according to certain criteria. The most important criteria are relevant qualifications or those similar to those of specialists for whom a replacement is being sought. The second criterion is how often the skilled workers have changed jobs in the past to assess the probability that they might be interested in changing jobs again.

If the system identifies interesting profiles, it presents them to the HR employees, who can then set the headhunting process, which is also almost completely automated, in motion: The first letter of offer, the appointment for the interview, the contract process, etc. – everything runs automatically, whereby At certain points people decide whether and how the process will continue. A chatbot can be used through automated queries to pre-select too many suitable candidates.

Onboarding, IT Equipment, And Training

If a position is filled, the work for HR continues straight away: The new employee needs a laptop, a telephone, if necessary a company car and a credit card, as well as a user profile including passwords in the company system. His computer must also be equipped with the software required for his work, including licenses and network access. Here, too, RPA can largely automate the process – HR employees define the necessary equipment for a new specialist, ordering and organization then run automatically in the background using software robots.

This also relieves the IT department. They usually spend a large part of their time on repetitive tasks that are easy to automate. In addition to organizing IT equipment, this also includes installing, updating, and licensing software. This process is mostly based on defined rules and is therefore suitable for automation via RPA. A transparent, automated process that minimizes errors is also recommended because it avoids the risk of non-compliance with software license requirements during audits.

But RPA can not only help with the hiring of new employees. The training and further education of the existing staff also require organizational effort, which software robots can easily take over – for example, when it comes to registering the presence of employees at training courses or gathering feedback on the quality of further training measures. Automated credit systems can also be implemented in this way, with which the qualification level of employees can be transparently tracked.

Process Optimization Is The Basis For Robotic Process Automation

These application scenarios and many other practical examples show how Robotic Process Automation can facilitate, enrich and accelerate HR work while saving time and money. At the same time, it should be noted that the introduction of RPA does not mean just configuring and starting a few software robots. A prerequisite for the successful introduction of RPA is the selection and, if necessary, optimization of suitable processes. The decision should not be made by the IT department or the management alone. To successfully implement RPA, HR, IT, and the board of directors needs to come together.

HR provides the necessary specialist knowledge, IT the technical framework and ensures that security and compliance are adhered to, and the board of directors contributes the strategic perspective. Change management can succeed during the transformation process towards RPA-supported workflows and the resulting changes in everyday business if everyone pulls together. But the advantages speak for themselves: If repetitive tasks are automated, the HR department can concentrate more on the employees’ concerns and thus on the people instead of routine work.