How technology can put the ‘human’ back into human resources
According to the Centre for Effective Organisations, a large proportion of an HR professional’s time is spent processing ‘tedious administrative tasks’ – 73.2 per cent to be precise.
One of the attractive aspects about HR is that there are so many career paths within it, and the positioning of HR at the heart of every business has opened up exciting and varied career paths. Working with people, introducing new benefits, employee welfare – there are many reasons why people choose to work in the profession, but I’m pretty sure ‘tedious administration tasks’ wasn’t one of them.
To realise the full potential of your HR team and significantly reduce the administration burden upon them, it’s seriously worth considering a modern technology platform to automate these time consuming tasks and give your HR team the freedom to focus on why they entered the profession.
Bring all your HR systems together
There’s a good chance your HR department will be working with multiple suppliers – health insurance companies, payroll providers, pensions, employee benefits – the list will be endless. Supporting all these functions can be time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. There are platforms out there to join all these systems together to save your HR team time and resource.
Implementing a fully integrated technology system which joins all your HR systems together means employees only have to login to one platform to view all your rewards, benefits and HR systems. This can save everyone time and energy.
Help recruit and retain the best talent
In the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s 2017 Resourcing and Talent Planning survey report, the median cost for recruiting senior managers/directors is £6,000 and the cost for all employees is £2,000.
Imagine a business with 500 employees, with a ten per cent staff turnover, this would equate to £100,000 in recruitment costs alone. This doesn’t even include training and resource needed by your HR team getting them up to speed.
To keep adding value to your business, the recruitment and retention of the best employees is crucial. Exceptional people need exceptional technology!
Streamline business decision making
The ability to see how your scheme is performing, anytime, anywhere, is a powerful tool that can help your business make better decisions based on real-time data.
Questions that previously took your HR team hours or days to answer are now responded to instantly. Detailed analytics enable your HR team to be in control, making the right decisions every day.
Going paperless
HR professionals struggle with tracking what seem like a million items and knowing where to find the data they are looking for at the drop of a hat.
Technology has allowed everything from new hire paperwork to pension contribution changes to be stored in one central place. This can only help keep never-sleeping HR departments on track.
Data security
With one of the biggest shake-ups in personal data looming, the General Data Protection Regulation is set to change the way every business in the UK processes personal data, to comply with new laws from 25 May 2018.
From an HR point of view, clear consent to process the data of your employees has to be explicitly given. This process alone adds further weight to the need to review your current HR methods, and importantly, look to technology to streamline this process to make sure you’re fully compliant.
Final thoughts
There are many technology solutions available to make HR’s life more productive. Implementing a platform to bring all these systems together enables your HR team to have more meaningful interactions with your people, wherever they are. Whether your workforce is all in one office or spread out across the globe, innovative technology means that every employee can have an exceptional experience.
The good news is that there’ll always be a place for humans in HR so we don’t have to worry about robots and technology just yet! We’ve just got to use the power that it brings to help our HR teams spend even more time on the human and strategic aspects of their work.
The onus is really now on the employer to provide the very best working environment, not just to help aid productivity, but because it truly does affect how long employees will stay with your business.
To explore how an online benefits platform could transform your reward and benefits offering and help put the ‘human’ back into your HR department, download Johnson Fleming's guide to creating a business case for an online benefits platform.
David Roderick is development director at Johnson Fleming.
This article was provided by Johnson Fleming.
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