Digital transformation has accelerated the adoption of new technologies within companies, especially in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. Robotic process automation is already widely used in a lot of industries and organizations, due to its benefits.
According to data gathered by AI Multiple, the global robotic process automation market size was valued at $1.40 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $11 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 34% from 2020 to 2027. Moreover, the potential economic impact of knowledge work automation is expected to be $5-7 trillion by 2025. The automation market will continue to grow exponentially.
The benefits of robotic process automation (RPA) in HR are very easy to spot. Generally speaking, HR is a crucial department for every company, since it’s responsible for all aspects and processes involving employees. From recruitment to onboarding, payroll, performance management, training and development, HR plays a key role for the culture and development of an organization.
From an operational perspective, an HR department deals with a lot of paperwork, spending most of their time doing repetitive and time-consuming tasks. When in fact, HR managers should be able to focus on more strategic decisions, like how to increase employees’ level of satisfaction and engagement – crucial elements for business success.
According to UiPath, our exclusive RPA vendor and partner, some of the benefits of robotic process automation in HR are:
- reclaiming up to 40% of employees’ time;
- 10x faster employee onboarding;
- return on investment on payroll achieved in 4 months;
- staff costs reduced by 60%;
- processing time reduced by 85%.
Diving deep into the usage of RPA in HR, we can think about the operational processes that require little to no human intervention. By HR automation, we refer to software robots that perform dull and high-volume tasks.
Robotic process automation can help HR departments increase efficiency and operate faster and at a lower cost than other technologies. According to Deloitte, more than 50% of standard HR processes could be automated. This way, HR managers can focus on activities that are more important for the organization.
Examples of robotic process automation use cases in HR
As mentioned above, many HR processes can be automated. The most notable and easy to implement RPA use cases in HR are:
1. Selection and recruitment
Recruiters are responsible for identifying the right workforce for a company but in order to do this, they have to go through a lot of repetitive tasks, such as: creating job descriptions, post hiring announcements, check applications, reach out to the best candidates, perform the interview and so on.
Software robots are perfect for tasks including resume screening and candidate shortlisting. All the data can be gathered and compared with the job descriptions, using predefined rules to see if a candidate may be a good fit for your company. Then you, as an HR professional, will be provided with a shortlist of the best candidates that will be called for interviews. The others will simply receive a kind (predetermined) rejection message.
For example, thanks to the UiPath software robot provided by Aggranda, First Bank team can now save more than 120 hours every month: the robot efficiently performs the onboarding process for new employees.
2. Onboarding
This is one of the most important processes for new employees, as they learn about their new role, company culture and acquire the right knowledge for performing their daily tasks. At the same time, onboarding is one of the most complex processes, taking into account the amount of new data that should be provided by the company: from creating new accounts to offering access rights and passwords for different systems.
Using robotic process automation (RPA) in HR, the whole process can be simplified: a specific template for the onboarding workflow can be automatically activated by the user and software robots can be used for assigning new credentials to the new employee and so on.
3. Payroll management
Managing payroll in large enterprises can be very time consuming and contains a significant amount of data (including salaries, taxes, bonuses, contractor payments and so on) to be handled by HR specialists without error. There is always a risk for human error or that some payments could even be delayed.
Robotic process automation eliminates this risk and contributes to saving a lot of time for the HR department. And you know what else? It makes HR managers a lot happier and satisfied with their jobs.
4. Expense management
Software robots can efficiently deal with all the expenses that may exist within a company, without missing receipts and any other important documents for financial transparency and accuracy.
5. Employee data management
An employee requires a lot of data to be managed and stored: from hiring contracts, payroll and other documents which would normally require manual performance. HR automation can do this faster and better, reducing the risk of possible errors.
For example, TotalSoft, one of Central and Eastern Europe’s most important ERP providers worked together with Aggranda to build a UiPath robot which saves at least 7 hours every day in their new contracts process for the company.
To emphasize the difference RPA made, it takes an employee around 30 minutes to perform these tasks, while the software robot performs them in just 2 minutes. 15 times faster. Read more about this RPA use case here.
6. Compliance and reporting
Depending on the country, labour legislation is updated every once in a while in order to make adjustments to the local working conditions. Naturally, every company should keep up with these regulations and prepare compliance reports. RPA helps HR departments to do all of this accordingly.
7. Offboarding
Just like onboarding, offboarding is also very important for both the employee and the organization. It refers to their separation process occurred due to resignation, dismissal or retirement.
Offboarding includes: transferring job responsibilities, deactivating access rights, returning equipment, and eventually conducting one or more exit interviews. A large part of this process could be easily performed by software robots.
For example, Arya is an HR software robot that helps Provident with the onboarding and offboarding of their employees.
Conclusion
We already knew that the HR department is vital for the success of any company. From this article, we also learned that HR processes are highly eligible for automation because of their repetitive nature.
Robotic process automation allows HR managers to focus on overall business performance. It can also create a more positive work climate and therefore, a well engaged workforce that is happier and more productive.