Drive Digitization of Workspace Experience Using Automation
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For all the praise and enthusiasm for technology and automation that pervades the workplace, studies show that a lot of processes are still being done manually. This is something many have expected to change in recent years, but as is often the case, change moves at the speed of trust, and trust takes time to build.
Trust in automation is mounting, but when asked why processes aren’t automated, leaders commonly give one of three answers:
- Too hard to implement
- Lack of visibility into what processes can be automated
- Perception that tools lack the power to handle complex processes.
But the reasons why automation is needed are there. HR managers spend an average of 14 hours each week on manual tasks that could be automated. And the majority of HR professionals see the potential for automation, with 87% saying it will fundamentally their work.
Remote Work Pushing Automation
The time of COVID-19 has been one of immense change and none more so than how we work as employees around the world made the shift to working remotely. But that move had consequences for people focused departments like HR.
There was increased pressure on HR teams to deliver as a strategic business function, new demands around hiring and retention of talent to cope with and elevated expectations around communication with employees and automation that would allow for employee self-service.
The phrase “new normal” got a bit worn out by the time we rang in 2021, but it was evident that times were quickly changing and that HR processes had to change with it.
“In terms of HR, when someone says automation or automation technology, it’s really common to just start talking about hiring and onboarding or time off processes,” Karina Mounivong, Vice President of Global HR at Nintex said during a recent session at our HR Tech North America event. “Now you’ve got applicant tracking systems and HRIS systems that can help automate a lot different things, but there are still a lot of gaps and things that are often manual, like performance reviews. That’s where we come in.”
The key is the ability for average HR professionals to automate tasks. Mounivong gave the example of a work from home use case agreement Nintex performed using their own technology during COVID to remain in compliance during COVID-19. The value was immense for the HR team.
“By leveraging the tools we have available, we’re able to provide and pull real time information if we needed to do that,” Mounivong said. “We weren’t doing a bunch of searching or sending emails to team members to try and find documents. It created a really smooth process for everyone in HR.”
Mounivong was joined by Terry Simpson, a Senior Solutions Engineer at Nintex, who provided a demo of how Nintex did this in a matter of hours using their no-code/low code solutions and how things like data capture and sharing data between systems can be automated with ease by people with little to no coding experience.
In the Q&A portion afterward, an attendee asked what types of processes Nintex’s HR teams has automated so far. Mounivong was keen to highlight that they’ve automated quite a bit of functions across the full employee lifecycle, from onboarding all the way through to resignation workflows and employee change forms.
“We’re continuously looking at our processes in HR and thinking about what we can automate or streamline,” Mounivong said. “When we hire someone it then sends out information to IT and finance to initiate processes with them. We’ve automated employee change forms, which I know for a lot of people involves filling out word docs and trying to get those over to managers. So it’s a lot of things that we look at to improve the way we work together through process automation.”
To watch the full Nintex session, including the demo of how they’ve automated a number of processes, click the link below!
Photo Courtesy of Stock Photo Secrets
