5 Signs That It’s Time to Update Your HR Processes and Tools

When is it time to update your HR processes and tools? It depends on a few factors. But for more businesses, the right time to establish a new HR process is today. Here’s why:

• 36% of HR professionals say that outdated technology is limiting their ability to sustain an effective onboarding program
• 80% of HR staff have found that proper HR tools can positively affect employee attitudes towards the organization
• HR managers lose about 14 hours a week from manual processes.
• It costs $20 to file a document and $120 to search for a lost document.

In other words, an HR department that still relies on manual processing and tools is losing time and money while providing a lackluster employee experience.

Manual processing can mean lost time and money, and bad employee experience.

But how do you know when it’s time to invest in HR software or revise your processes? the answer isn’t always clear-cut. But there are a few signs that indicate it’s time to automate your workflow.

5 signs that it’s time to update HR processes and tools

Budget constraints or a small staff both contribute to an extensive backlog of tasks and employee turnover. And it takes more than a few new HR policies to take an organization’s human resources department to the next level.

The following are our top 5 signs its time to automate your HR workflow.

1. High turnover or absenteeism

One of the most obvious signs that you need to update your HR process is increasing employee turnover or absenteeism. The average turnover rate is 20%, and 45% of employees leave after a year or less. And the cost of replacing that worker is at least 33% of their annual salary.

Poor onboarding and company culture integration are primary reasons for lack of employee retention. If your organization has a disjointed employee onboarding program — or worse, none at all — it’s time for the HR department to build a stronger employee experience.

2. Paperwork is a nightmare

Keeping clear records is a vital HR function mandatory for compliance, but as an organization grows, documentation becomes more complex. From timesheets to employee benefits packages, a successful HR workflow requires a lot of paperwork.

If you find yourself searching for papers regularly, running out of storage room, or your HR team has multiple, non-consistent ways to access data, there’s a problem. Not only is the team wasting time, but it’s possible that sensitive employee information can easily be compromised. Inefficiencies and errors in documentation can also result in non-compliance fines, ballooning department costs. You can update your HR process to include better record-keeping guidelines and software.

Not only can paperwork be a nightmare to manage, but it can result in non-compliance headaches and fines.

3. Lack of visibility

Traditional employee performance reviews bury important information and prevent HR management from seeing retention and productivity from a bid’s eye view. To better support employees and business objectives, HR leaders require clear and accurate data. Not only can this help HR professionals pinpoint issues with employee engagement and the employee onboarding process, but data can also drive improved talent management and company culture.

At the end of the day, better visibility means more data, and more data translates into more autonomy for managers and support for employees. And as businesses continue to move their operations more online, access to enhanced analytics has become less of a competitive edge and more of a necessity.

4. Employees don’t have self-service

One way to reduce manual tasks for HR teams is to allow employees to complete and submit paperwork themselves. This includes:

• PTO requests
• Employee feedback
• Performance reviews
• Benefits decisions
• Timesheets
• Other employee requests

Without a comprehensive digital platform, HR employees can spend an entire day trying to clean up their inboxes and follow lengthy email threads. If you update your HR processes so employees can take care of these tasks on their own, you’ll free up a lot of time for more important tasks.

5. There’s not enough time or money for everything

If your team feels overwhelmed by the number of HR tasks in the backlog, it may be time to upgrade your HR process. Employee onboarding and payroll alone contain tedious subtasks that can easily eat up days or weeks of work. Workflow automation can help HR employees streamline the administrative tasks related to the employee lifecycle, freeing up money and resources.

Manual workflows can be more expensive than HR automation software.

The lack of resources or a tight budget can also signify it’s time to shift to HR software. Manual workflows take up time and increase expenses. With the right HR automation software, HR employees and management spend less time on the small stuff, cut costs from errors and multiple software, and boost their productivity.

How to upgrade and update your HR processes

Let’s face it, outdated HR planning and workflow are costly and time-consuming. Spreadsheets will only work for so long, and as a business grows, its human resources department should grow, too. HR professionals can better support employees throughout their time at the company when they don’t have to chase down benefits decisions and timesheets.

But it’s not just the HR team that benefits. When the HR workflow is efficient and optimized, it’s easier for employees to improve their professional lives at every level of the organization. This means it’s more likely that a company can retain talent, reduce turnover, and boost its bottom line.

The good news is, you can get started today. Before moving into a new platform, solidify efficient payroll onboarding processes with our Ultimate ZIP File for HR Managers.