Thanks to the explosion of AI enhancements in productivity tools, the ability to automate workflows for your team has reached a “we can’t afford to ignore this” level of power and efficiency.
It’s not entirely surprising. After all, when new technological capabilities roll out in the business world, it all too often goes like this.
- “Hey, look at the cool new thing people are doing over there.”
- “Huh, there are a lot more people doing this thing . . . ”
- “OK, if we don’t do this thing, we’re gonna be left behind.”
No matter what business you run, that’s where we are now.
The ability to automate workflows through software tools is at an all-time high. It’s possible to free up endless hours of time previously spent on busywork for more strategic tasks.
This applies to all areas of a business – production, operations, customer experience, but in the case of human resources, automated workflows do the most strategic thing possible. They offload busywork to make room for more focus on humans.
In HR, automation makes way for relationship building and the connections that turn a workforce into a team. The freedom your HR staff needs to build a workplace culture that attracts and retains great talent is found in software tools like the ones we discuss below.
Automate Your Knowledge Base
This may sound like the least exciting thing to start with, but hear us out.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one. Someone needs to look up a policy in your handbook. Let’s say it’s about your travel reimbursement policy for meals.
It usually goes something like this.
Your employee . . .
- Looks for the handbook file.
- Can’t remember where the file lives.
- Searches again for the file.
- Goes to get coffee.
- Searches again.
- Contacts HR. “Where is this file?”
- Finds the file.
- Starts rifling through 50+ pages of content.
- Contacts HR. “Where is it in this PDF? I just can’t find it.”
- Gets more coffee.
You get the idea.
It can easily take 30 minutes or more for an employee to locate an appropriate file in the company database.
So imagine this instead.
- Employee enters the company knowledge base program.
- They ask it a question just like they would Google. “What is our policy on meal reimbursement?”
- The knowledge base searches all of your documents and delivers an answer.
- The employee forgets they wanted coffee and moves on to the next task. (Well, maybe.)
Knowledge bases are powerful for productivity. But also, imagine searching for that one important thing said in a meeting six months ago that you know must be in the notes somewhere. If only you knew which meeting!
Imagine searching the history of thought on why a policy ended up the way it is in the first place.
At Xenium, we’ve been implementing a knowledge base initiative to upload 20 years’ worth of history and institutional knowledge into a searchable database. In our case, we’ll gain the power to search decades of HR wisdom and insights. We’ve been using the Guru platform, but there are many options out there.
Automate Your Onboarding and Training Process
We remember days when a Xenium HR Business Partner would travel to a business with a stack of papers in hand to onboard a new employee.
And so, there they would sit, filling out papers.
Exciting stuff.
Today’s workforce expects convenience, to be able to login to a portal and onboard themselves. They also enjoy having the ability to view their critical information on demand.
But more importantly, guess what there’s time for when an HR Business Partner isn’t spending time ferrying papers back and forth?
Human stuff.
There’s time to meet employees and get to know them. There’s time to build relationships and trust.
Xenium provides clients with our own exclusive HR, payroll, and benefits software tools, and there are many other solutions out there for automated onboarding.
But onboarding isn’t just about paperwork. What about training?
There are two choices at hand.
- Say the same things over and over again over countless hours of training new employees.
- Record it and document it using automated workflow tools. Give a new employee the link and focus your attention on more strategic tasks.
Loom and Scribe are both great tools for capturing how-to’s, tutorials, and walkthroughs of critical tasks.
For more in-depth training, consider using a learning management system where you can establish more formal online courses like the on-demand HR training found at Xenium and hold employees accountable for completing the course.
And lest you think sending an employee to view a course sacrifices the human touch, consider this.
When you aren’t spending time repeating the same training over and over again, guess what there’s time for?
Human stuff.
Schedule a focused conversation to answer an employee’s questions or concerns about the training. Spend time truly engaging in concentrated, meaningful conversations.
Automation can always make room for more real-world, human encounters.
Automate Appointment Booking
By now, you’ve used someone else’s Calendly link or similar scheduling tool. The time these tools can save is astronomical. Instead of many painful back and forth emails sent in a herculean effort to coordinate schedules, one link does it all.
Now, consider this automated workflow from an HR perspective.
- Suddenly, you can be more accessible to employees. You still control when and how, but they know you stand ready to help.
- Potential, much-needed talent is less likely to be lost in the recruiting race due to a clunky, back-and-forth scheduling struggle.
- People on your team can better guard their own schedules. It’s easier to set boundaries and protect time needed for priorities like project work without having to say no over and over again. In a scheduler, the boundaries are impersonal and clear.
Beyond Calendly, Microsoft 365 and Google have scheduling tools and there are many other options on the market.
Other Automated Workflow Priorities You Should Consider
Recruiting and Hiring – Tracking job applications and resumes without a solid recruiting platform is so exhausting! Automated recruiting platforms save time in your search and in the application process. You can also use them to build your own powerful database of candidates. Xenium provides an exclusive applicant tracking software solution for clients, but there are many strong options on the market.
Taking Notes in Meetings – Tools like Fathom, Otter AI, and a host of others are solving the problem of “How do I take notes during a Zoom call?” Let these programs record your call, capture important notes along the way, and generate a full transcript afterward so you can focus on the humans you’re talking with. These tools empower better engagement and focus in meetings while capturing more detail than you can on your own.
Software Platform Integrations – Once upon a time, if you added a software tool to your stack, there was a very good chance your different productivity tools would refuse to talk to one another and infuse headache-inducing complexity into your workflows. Zapier has made it possible to integrate nearly any set of software platforms into a cohesive, time-saving, error-reducing whole. When you think about the collection of software platforms HR departments tend to acquire, this becomes invaluable.
Xenium’s internal HR, payroll, timekeeping, and benefits admin software solutions are already integrated. This makes the waterfalls of paperwork needed to make major adjustments in an employee’s status manageable and less vulnerable to critical omissions or errors.
Before You Pursue Automation, Take a Step Back.
The worst thing you can do for your team (and your budget) is pursue too many automation tools at once. The sheer overwhelm on training, adoption, and culture shift alone can exhaust your team.
- Figure Out What’s Missing – Identify the inefficiencies in your workflows. Where does your team struggle and lose time on a regular basis?
- Prioritize Your List – Which ones are most urgent? It could be because of employee morale, productivity bottlenecks, or the need to recruit new talent asap.
- Consider Your Options – Every workflow tool has its advantages. Which ones best fit your team’s needs?
- Implement and Onboard – Who will own this process on your team? Who will see to it your new automation becomes a reality, and who will help your team adopt it?
Automated Workflows for HR Perform Best in Expert Hands
At Xenium, we put more than 20 years of experience and the collective expertise of more than 80 HR professionals behind our clients’ automated workflows.
One of the most powerful automated workflows at Xenium involves the integration of HR, payroll, and benefits administration under one platform. Most companies know the pain of having to coordinate these overlapping areas with multiple vendors. Putting everything into one central hub with experts available to answer your questions creates a better experience for leadership and employees alike.
Xenium also weaves your automations into a larger strategy for building an innovative, positive workplace culture that attracts and retains an amazing team.
Xenium partners with businesses nationwide to relieve the endless challenges and demands of HR. Learn more about our custom HR support services at XeniumHR.com.