As an HR leader, it’s crucial to have the most efficient processes in place across your organization. But this can be challenging to scale as your organization grows. Human Resources departments spending two full days per week on paperwork alone. This is preventing HR leaders from focusing on other priorities, causing them to look for new ways to create efficiencies. And there’s also the efficiencies to be gained with interdepartmental collaboration. HR leaders not taking advantage of or creating those opportunities face serious efficiency impediments. When HR leaders collaborate across their company and leverage automation and technology to streamline processes across their workforce, companies win.
Increasing Interdepartmental Efficiencies: Collaboration Between HR and Finance Leaders
One giant opportunity for efficiencies comes from interdepartmental collaboration. Let’s start by looking at the relationship between HR and Finance leaders. Without trust, they fail to collaborate in decision-making processes. They create silos and disconnect in how the business is run. Let’s consider the following scenario where your business is implementing a new expense management system.
Finance will likely play a major role in determining the cost, ROI, and overall benefit of the new system. HR’s role should be to create a solid change management plan that considers budget, timelines, communications, implications from an individual and organizational perspective, training, necessary resources, technology and documentation. In this scenario, there’s a tremendous opportunity for HR leaders to provide expertise and guidance that will have substantial impact on the success of the change.
Increasing Interdepartmental Efficiencies: Collaborating with IT for Enhanced Cybersecurity
Another opportunity for efficiency exists in HR leaders connections with IT. The company needs technology solutions that empower employees to be more productive. IT is essential to helping them realize their true potential and accommodate their day-to-day in the workplace. For example, HR teams need an effective HRIS. Sales teams need a robust CRM system. Marketing teams needs a fully-functional tech-stack and Customer Services teams need cloud-based communications solutions.
But perhaps equally important, IT needs to provide all employees with the right accommodations, whether in office or remote. Those include secure devices, a strong internet connection, etc. At the end of the day, how can a company recruit top talent if it doesn’t have a workplace that keeps up? With so many other companies adapting and advancing with the latest trends, it’s mandatory.
As the modern workplace evolves, HR and IT teams deal with new challenges. They must make sure employees know they’re fully committed to keeping a pulse on cyber security and privacy. That should translate to time spent educating employees about policies and best practices.
Companies Benefits When HR Leaders Leverage Automation
HR software and tools are a critical market for new opportunities to transform the workplace as we know it. HR leaders can leverage automation. The technology already exists in the marketplace to automate processes and boost productivity across their organization.
With increased pressure on HR professionals to create efficiencies across their business, automation tools offer increased productivity. Here are two areas where HR leaders can use automation for these purposes:
- Evaluate and implement a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) to streamline processes for HR and create operational efficiencies within the organization.
- Offer automation tools to your mobile employees to boost productivity and ensure compliance.
What is an HRIS system?
What exactly is a HRIS system? As defined by The Balance, an HRIS is “a software or online solution for data entry, data tracking, and data information needs of a company’s HR, payroll, management and accounting functions.” Best-in-class HRIS systems typically house the management of all employee information, company-related documents, benefits administration, applicant tracking, performance development plans and more. These systems serve as comprehensive databases, housing a broad range of different information and data for an organization’s HR department.
How HRIS Systems Create Efficiencies
At Motus, our HR team uses ADP – which automates many processes that would otherwise be manual. In my day-to-day role, I like to consider ADP a one-stop-shop for all things Motus HR. Those include reporting, policy and document tracking, payroll processing, compensation analysis and benefits administration.
Using ADP for our HRIS system allows me to create reports and presentations in addition to holding all our information surrounding HR initiatives. Those might include listing job applicants, electronic copies of employee paperwork such as W-2 and I-9 forms. I can also run compensation reports for our annual budget or performance reports for employees. All these pieces are housed in one single database! This robust reporting structure saves me a considerable amount of time each day, month and quarter.
For administering and maintaining employee benefits, ADP once again saves the day. When we hire a candidate, they can log in to ADP and complete open enrollment, right from their computer. It’s that simple. What’s particularly important for this self-service type of benefits enrollment? It can be updated at any time at the employee’s discretion. This provides employees the freedom to independently modify or improve their benefits with Motus. It only takes a few simple clicks of a mouse.
Leveraging Automation for HR Reporting and Metrics
Gaining insight into your company’s mobile workforce is a serious game changer. Whatever your reimbursement program needs, gaining insights into employee activity enables administrators to analyze and improve mobile worker operations. At Motus, the key HR reporting metrics are a direct result of the company culture we strive to uphold. They’re the nature of our business and industry. Our People team focuses on metrics that fall under the umbrella of attracting and retaining employees. We’re enabling them to perform at their utmost potential, namely: recruiting, turnover, performance management and employee engagement.
Recruiting
Our team is always trying to find the next best crop of talent — whether recruiting for an entry-level position or searching for a Senior Vice President, the process remains the same. These metrics include number of applications submitted, number of interviews conducted, and time required to close an open role. It’s important to note that these will depend on the size and scope of your business.
Turnover
To uncover reasons why an employee decides to leave the business, it’s crucial to measure voluntary versus involuntary turnover. Consider questions like how many employees left the company during a certain time period? Did these employees leave the company by choice? Did they leave for other personal interests? Or were they simply not performing up to par? Retaining human capital is critically important to the business. These data points are important for all HR leaders to showcase they have an understanding of employee motivations.
Performance Management
This one may seem a bit obvious but it’s very significant. Your business likely already measures employee promotions over a given quarter. Or how many roles were filled during a specific period of time. This metric is a strong indicator of how well your employees fit within their given roles. It also allows managers within your business to provide feedback around areas for improvement.
Employee Engagement
According to a study by Harvard Business Review: Analytic Services, an overwhelming 71% of respondents rank employee engagement as very important to achieving overall organizational success. A few ways to measure employee engagement include:
- What is the attendance rate at company-hosted events? Do employees attend these events at a consistent rate?
- Do employees attend professional development seminars and workshops? Do these workshops produce actionable results?
If your employees are motivated to come to work each day, this breeds a winning culture. That helps your business thrive and grow in the long-run.
Best Practices for Implementing Collaboration and Automation
While one company’s business objectives may be vastly different from another’s, HR leaders ultimately want to optimize efficiency. As shared earlier, collaboration across departments is essential. That always begins with communicating, getting on the same page about common goals to work toward together.
Another essential is have the right reporting metrics in place. This guarantees your business is in the best possible position to thrive and grow in its respective industry. As a team, we believe a strong company culture is extremely valuable. Most of the metrics we report on (recruiting, turnover, performance management and employee engagement) are a byproduct of our people. If you’ve fostered a work environment that allows your employees to learn, grow and advance each day, you’re setting your business up for continued success.
Looking to explore more efficiency, reporting and recruiting opportunities? Learn how Motus solutions can help your team in these resources.
The HR Hangout is a recurring series on the Motus blog featuring advice from Jessica Chronchio, Director of People Operations at Motus. A proven Human Resources leader, Jessica has her Master’s Degree in Human Resources Management and is an active member of SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management). The topics covered range from empowering HR in the boardroom, best practices around people management, insights on industry trends, and advice for today’s HR leader.
