A recent survey conducted by one of the Big Four global accounting networks Deloitte confirmed :
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as a viable and proven solution with over 74% of the respondents planning to explore the technology in the coming years, and almost 22% of them having already piloted or fully implemented RPA.
What is RPA?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of the recent technologies that have completely revolutionized the way we look at routine and repetitive tasks. Emeritus professor in The London School of Economics and Political Science, Professor Leslie Willcocks defined RPA as :
“It can take the robot out of the human. RPA is a type of software that mimics the activity of a human being in carrying out a task within a process. It can do repetitive stuff more quickly, accurately, and tirelessly than humans, freeing them to do other tasks requiring human strengths such as emotional intelligence, reasoning, judgment, and interaction with the customer.”
How can RPA transform the Human Resources department?
Robotic Process Automation is an outstanding method to improve data handling for HR. RPA can automatically execute all regular processes including every highly transactional HR duty without any need for human attention.
In HR operations, there are filled with high-volume and repetitive tasks such as onboarding of new hires, processing payroll, benefits enrollment, and compliance reporting. RPA can take over all these boring and tedious tasks from HR, it is not only improving the accuracy and speed of these processes but also releasing HR to do other tasks that required their abilities, such as interview potential employees, plan a team building event, and support employees on health issues, pregnancies, etc.
Normally, every HR unit plays a critical role in supporting employees and ameliorating the overall working conditions to make certain that everyone in the place can perform their job productively. However, considering the enormous amount of data management – form filling, updating & validating records, and an uninterrupted inrush of request processing, drown the HR managers in monotonous admin tasks.
The focus of RPA in HR operations is primarily on the micro-tasks, when applying RPA in the Human Resource department, organizations can drastically compress the mundane processes by automating the most repetitive tasks and allow HR managers to focus on other productive and more strategic jobs that require their strengths, to enhance the company’s growth.
RPA has a huge potential to change the entire HR industry fundamentally by bringing in better efficiency and a faster return on investment. As a completely non-invasive technology, RPA can work in the back office without human intervention. There are several benefits of using RPA in HR which include:
- CV Screening & Shortlisting Candidates
When HR units start the hiring process, they have to read a bunch of resumes, and screening applications for the open positions which are very time-consuming. If HRs spend too much time on CV screening, they might miss some talented candidates, or HRs may interview the wrong candidate when they didn’t detailly shortlist CV, which is waste of time.
RPA robots can simplify this process by gathering the applications and comparing all the information against the list of specific job requirements.
Using RPA technology, these requirements can be seen as preplanned rules which guide the overall selection procedure. Based on this, the qualifying candidates can be sent the interview notification emails, whereas rejection notifications could be sent to those who don’t match the selection criteria.
Further, HR managers can use RPA technology to eliminate the huge piles of paperwork during the process. Using the database that keeps all the potential employees’ profiles, RPA in HR can categorize and inform all candidates of their interview results. With the assistant of RPA, the HR units can turn the rather complicated recruitment process into a much smoother one and help attract and keep top talent.
- Simplifying Onboarding process
HR onboarding is generally a very lengthy monotonous process where the joining of the candidate requires coordinated efforts of multiple people, HR has to create a new user account, access rights for applications, IT equipment, email address, employee record, generate employee numbers, and more. A good onboarding process is extremely important for the company because it can let new hires to quickly adapt the new environment and be productive. Also, companies need to spend a lot of energy and cost just to recruit an employee. If the colleague can't quickly integrate and play a role, the previous expenses are a huge waste.
Robotic Process Automation can be used to streamline the entire onboarding process, such as sending onboarding documents what credentials to assign the new employee.
Moreover, RPA can easily create employees’ ID and allow new workmates to get started with their new roles in a smooth and hassle-free manner.
In short, RPA in the onboarding process can:
Reduce onboarding process costs as robots help HR teams by handling tedious manual and repetitive processes, and automatically transcribe information from various sources into multiple systems.
Increase the overall onboarding processing speed by automatically validating new hire data and entering the same into different systems.
Reduce error rates in HR onboarding processes by accurately updating personal and account information across multiple systems to facilitate fast processing.