HR departments are in desperate need of automation. The number one complaint of HR professionals has consistently been of lost productivity due to answering repetitive employee questions, lengthy forms, and onboarding new employees. Departments across all industries would rather put the human back in human resources by connecting with employees to strategically move the company forward rather than get sucked into these repetitive tasks that deserve to be automated. And chatbots are rising to the occasion.
To give you an idea of just how bogged down HR professionals are, research by Ed Lawler and John Boudreau from the Center of Effective Organizations found that, on average, over 50% of a human resources department’s time is spent processing employee information and answering their questions.
Here are just 3 important reasons why your HR department needs to join those who’ve already started their automation journey:
1. You have a large company, and those employees have lots of questions
Not only that, the requests at hand often require HR to spend time crawling through mounds of information specific to each employee in order to provide the correct answers. A chatbot can use your internal data to offer employees instant responses to their questions without them ever reaching out to your HR personnel. Case or incident deflection is the term used in the industry to enable employees to find answers before they become a task for your HR partner.
With an average HR-to-employee ratio of 1:100 in the United States, reducing questions by 70% will mean departments will gain back significant amounts of time. Take your frequently asked questions, cases and incidents and enable an Artificial Intelligence based chatbot to answer those questions effectively.
2. You’ve got remote employees and multiple cities/buildings
Going digital has many advantages, but with today’s global multi-site operations, it’s more important than ever to move your tasks online. It’s estimated now that 43% of the workforce in the United States are currently working at least some of their time remotely engaging with their co-workers. Maintaining engagement with a global team is crucial to the cohesion of your company, and your employees will appreciate communicating in frictionless texting based conversations. Chatbots integrated with your HRM, CRM, and IT systems are tailormade to drive your company to higher productivity levels.
3. Standardizing and automating onboarding
Your company is expanding rapidly or your industry may have a high churn rate, either way your HR department could use some help in this realm. From June 2015 to June 2016, U.S companies on-boarded 62.3 million new hires., About 25 percent of those new hires, or 15.5 million people, likely will switch jobs within a year. Onboarding and offboarding not only costs a lot of money, but takes up significant time in the HR department. Here are some functions that chatbots could automate:
- Send and complete prior paperwork to keep day-one housekeeping to a minimum.
- Complete HR related tasks, including I-9 forms, payroll information, 401(k) contributions, and other benefit selections over automated messaging, collecting all information into one database.
- Schedule drug screenings or other pre-hire background checks to make the process less invasive.
- Coordinate technology and equipment so that it is ready to go upon arrival.
- Send directions and reminders for time, location, and more.
A CareerBuilder study found that 55% of HR managers believe Artificial Intelligence will be a regular part of their function in 5 years. More than a quarter of managers believe they are already losing 20 hours or more a week to functions that could be automated.
There are a vast number of use cases for which chatbots can automate HR workflow functions. Any of those tasks where a chatbot can take over will leave HR professionals open to focus on strategic functions such as connecting with employees, hiring development, and networking externally. With automation, companies will save significant time and resources, and in turn grow and expand their business cost-effectively.
To learn more on how chatbots can automate your HR functions, reach out to us with any questions at [email protected].
