When you think of a business process with a automation potential, do you think of a particular team? Human resources may not be the first obvious priority. However, there are many manual procedures in the HR daily reality, and automating these can make them more efficient.
For example, an employee is recruited by your company and human resources must ensure that it is well integrated. Despite their good will, they can not achieve this integration alone. Equipment, applications and access must be activated by the IT department upon hiring. How to automate HR operations without slowing down the efficiency and learning curve of the new employee?
For several years now, IT Service Management Systems (ITSM) have not been confined to information technology, but focused on providing real value to the organization and its business services (finance, customer service, human resources, procurement, logistics). These tools also aim to support a range of these processes outside IT; we are now talking about Enterprise Service Management (ESM).
Enterprise Service Management (ESM) is the technology platform that allows you to do just that. This article will help you learn more about how process automation makes human resource management more fluid and efficient.
The expectations of the business services
Currently, repetitive and manual actions can complicate the task of HR specialists. Staff turnover, relocations, access changes or promotions of all kinds sometimes result in a large number of requests that must be processed quickly. Human resources services want more efficiency and above all, offer better services in a shorter time. The process is underway, but will continue to evolve, as shown by a CareerBuilder survey, which accounts for 37% of HR processes that are automated compared to 53% for IT.
“Still according to CareerBuilder, 72% of employers expect some human resource roles to be fully automated in the next decade”
Concretely, a ESM software automates the delivery of services. Instead of using manual processes to accomplish tasks, users can submit service requests. The service they ask for services can see what the request is, who sent it and when. Decision makers can then approve or reject the request.
HR : A good fit for process automation
What makes human resources a good candidate? This is an area with many manual processes that could be made more efficient by introducing automation. We will illustrate with an example.
George has just moved in and he needs to change his address with the Human Resources Department. This process involves a change of position and waiting for someone to submit the change of address form, then fill out the form and wait for someone to enter the information into a database. Sending an email is a waste of time: it would go into a shared inbox that would never be checked.
“Eighty-six percent of companies believe they will need intelligent automation by 2020 to meet the needs of their business”
What would this process look like with ESM software? George would go on an online platform or open a conversational tool / virtual agent (chatbot). He would tap his request to change his address. The ESM platform would be connected to the database in which employee information is stored and update George’s address accordingly.
The contrast between the two processes is huge. In the first example, George loses valuable time and effort to complete a simple task. In the second example, George does not even have to leave his office to complete the required task and finishes it in a few minutes.
“In 2017, HDI reported that over 65% of very mature companies used their ITSM suite outside of IT”
The human resources department does not have to be associated with manual and tedious processes. With an ESM system, HR operations can be fast and efficient with automation.
To learn more about how ESM systems can help your human resources department, please download the guide on centralizing business services.