#4 Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in HR Operations

 The HR process has always been one of the most time-consuming and resource-hungry parts of an organization. As organizations tend to grow exponentially after the breakthrough period, keeping pace with the organization’s development becomes the biggest challenge. And this is especially true in the case of HR teams.

However, the road toward creating a more engaging world of work is nowhere with the introduction of RPA in HR. As RPA is now doing more and more manual work, it leaves room for HR teams to pursue and work on high-value work that can elevate the business to the next level.

Introduction to RPA in Human Resources Management

Before starting with our blog RPA in Human Resources Management and Operations in detail, knowing the current scenario is essential. Businesses today have been experiencing a major shift from old obsolete technologies to new ones. The new ones have been emerging at a tremendous rate, and the organizations that want to succeed have to adapt to this change, or else they either will be rendered dormant or thrown into the bin.

For example, the customer nowhere days demand immediate responses to their grievances. Thus, companies need to work hard to acknowledge each of these. To survive these harsh business conditions, businesses need to automate their repetitive tasks. This is the only way to free up more time so that employees can devote their time to more important business activities. That is why; RPA technology has become necessary in the Human Resources Department.

Use Case involving Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in Resource Onboarding Process of HR

What is RPA in HR Department?

RPA, also called Robotic Process Automation, uses robotic technology by businesses to automate various repetitive tasks. In Human Resources operations, this does not imply that robots are taking all the decisions instead of RPA use cases in HR to involve automating the simplest, most repetitive administrative and clerical actions at the keystroke level. HR operations processes that can be simplified using RPA include employee relations, recruiting and hiring training and development, benefits and compensation, and HR generalist activities.

Deploying RPA in Human Resource Management significantly reduces the time employees devote to these tasks, enabling them to focus on more quality tasks like talent development, retention, and policy implementation. As a result, it leads to increased productivity and efficiency in different activities within the HR Department. RPA uses multiple robots to handle these tasks; this way, an organization has a fully functional virtual workforce to handle all these tasks with greater accuracy and efficiency.

The RPA industry was already blooming and growing significantly every year. In 2021 alone, a lot of industries adopted RPA to leverage its power. The leading industry to include Robotic process automation in their growth plan was the manufacturing industry, with a percentage of 35%. It was followed by,

• Tech industry (31%).
• Healthcare industry (10%).
• Retail industry (8%).
• Finance industry (8%).
• Public sector (5%).
• Education industry (3%).

But with the introduction of RPA for human resources, more and more industries are now being inclined to adopt RPA in their business plan.

What are the benefits of RPA in Human Resources Management Processes?

The use of RPA technology by the human resources department in business has enormous potential. The following are the main advantages of RPA for the HR department.

Low risk and easily integrated - RPA is a low-risk non-invasive technology that can be easily integrated with the existing system allowing the HR team to create a platform that continuously grows with new algorithms and machine learning tools.

Increased productivity - RPA can free up human workers to focus more on high-value tasks such as employee engagement and retention tasks and contribute directly to the company's overall strategic goals, thus increasing overall productivity.

Scalability - The cost per effort of RPA is negligibly low when operated on a large scale and increased or decreased as per the system's demands, leading to zero or no wastage of efforts or downtime for the system as a whole.

Accuracy - It offers precise output and decisions rapidly when it comes to data analytics because of its computational supremacy, which far outperforms its human counterparts.

Consistency - It has been created for perfect replication and error-free performance, eliminating output variation during an operational term.

Reliability - They can work 24/7/365 and do not require any sick leaves.

Flexibility - RPA is an industry-agnostic tool that follows a well-programmed procedure irrespective of the deployment environment.

Use Cases – RPA in Human Resources

RPA employs tools to streamline the processes in the Human Resources team. RPA enables the human resource team to manage a large number of administrative tasks starting from hiring an employee and ending when the employee retires. By automating the department's processes, we benefit the department and the whole of the organization. Description of various use cases are below:

Screening & Shortlisting Candidates

The human resource department needs to filter a large number of applications before posting a new job. Sorting through the CVs and adjusting the data takes up a large amount of time for them.

By using RPA technology, we can easily process resumes and perform various data verification tasks in a few clicks. We can also shortlist candidates based on our preferred metrics and find the best talents without having to spend hours on tedious manual labour.

This saves the company time and energy. It also reduces the effort required to hire someone, thus ensuring a successful hire.

On-Boarding

Recruitment process automation can help streamline the on-boarding process and save time for both sides. Automated resume screening and shortlisting candidates can be handled by bots, who will then handle the rest of the on-boarding process. From delivering a digital offer letter to sending a guideline for orientation, HR automation can do it all.

Employee Data Management

Another big part of HR automation is employee data management. In most companies globally, the HR team is usually responsible for handling all forms of employee data, including compliance and hiring.

Manually handling and storing employee data takes up a significant amount of time. In order to save time, companies are turning to RPA technology. This allows users to automate all of the data management processes and free up HR professionals to do other high-value tasks. Moreover, a company that uses RPA technology can avoid errors when reading, synching or copying data. This low error rate also helps reduce troubleshooting time spent on data.

Payroll Processing

Payroll processing is a repetitive task that is important to businesses of all sizes, regardless of their industry. Though it involves only a few data entry tasks, they are prone to human error and can take a long time to complete. RPA technology streamlines this process, allowing employees to get paid in time and increasing job satisfaction levels among workers.

Resume Screening & Candidate Shortlisting

The process of screening resumes and then shortlisting the right candidate can be a time taking process; on average, it takes up to three days to conduct a single hire process. But with RPA automating this, the bots can gather and screen resumes, perform background verification and compare information against relevant job requisition; thereby, selecting the best candidates with just a few clicks. This process of automating the screening and quality verification tasks saves the time and effort of the recruiter. This also enhances the quality of the hiring process by finding the best match for the job.

Induction and Training

The induction and training process when the company hires a new employee or takes a new project. By automating the process, the deployed bot can check the certification status of the employee against the requirement for the new process or application. Also, it notifies the employees about the certification required; it also manages the certificate compliance and blocks the employee calendars based on the training needs and schedules. This helps in reducing more than three training days per employee annually, reduces associated help desk calls by around 18%, and reduces data entry errors by 30%.

Reports & Analysis of Surveys and Review

Analysis and reporting activities are a cumbersome process for HR. The data is necessary to be in the correct format and at the right place to make an intelligent decision. It also involves the screening of company surveys and reviews from all the sources. In addition to this, HR needs to spend hours to create and update dashboards consistently. RPA bots, helps to minimize all of this task to a few clicks. These bots ensure automatic report generation, including data capture and cleaning. They also automate the process of screening company surveys and reviews. All of this procedure leads to a reduction in time employed to do the tasks and data consistency.

Performance Management

The human resources team must gather a variety of data in order to generate reports on employee performance. The time it takes to develop these reports is dependent on the length of time it takes for employees to return their performance surveys.

With RPA, bots can now take care of all the data capturing and report creation. To ensure a consistent evaluation technique, the software can also be set to carry out this function at predetermined intervals.

Off-Boarding- Exit Management

Responsibility for handling all the exit procedures falls under the purview of human resources. They must make sure that the exit procedure for present employees is carried out smoothly and in an excellent manner.

Companies use automation to streamline manual processes, including payroll and access control. This creates a positive office culture, good word of mouth for the company, and more time for the business owner to focus on strategic initiatives.

Conclusion

A company is only as good as its employees, which won't change even with the arrival of robots. Robots will help the businesses streamline their business process and differentiate between those who require their unstipulated time. While the robots can perform the others. It can efficiently assemble and consolidate data. It can also significantly reduce expenses. It also helps HR to focus on tasks like handling grievances of the employees. Thus, increasing their job satisfaction and help them concentrate better. By deploying RPA in the business organization in HR services, you ensure through-and-through easy data management. Thus, assigning your mundane day-to-day tasks to a robot is a great benefit.

References

Nanonets AI & Machine Learning Blog. (2022). The role of RPA in HR: Definition, Benefits, Use Cases & Case Studies. [online] Available at: https://nanonets.com/blog/the-role-of-rpa-in-hr/.

www.cignex.com. (n.d.). Automate HR Processes with RPA | CIGNEX. [online] Available at: https://www.cignex.com/blog/automate-hr-processes-with-rpa [Accessed 27 Aug. 2023].