In a fierce and competitive talent market, high-performing organisations are seldom able to keep up with their speed of growth. This is especially true of human resources (HR), which is tasked with managing core HR operations for a constantly expanding workforce, while ensuring a promising talent pipeline to meet the growth needs of the organisation. With traditional tools of the trade, HR leaders spend time on routine tasks which are therefore, unable to keep up with the speed of business growth.
This brings us to three key HR needs of fast-growing organisations:
- Scale: In a growing organisation, HR services such as payroll management, HR reporting, rewards and recognition, and performance management must be able to scale to meet the needs of an expanding workforce.
- Predict: Growing organisations must be able to predict their talent needs before they arise, estimate the outcomes of their policies and decisions on employee satisfaction, and anticipate what their employees need the most.
- Innovate: Scaling organisations experience greater impact from shifting dynamics of the talent landscape. As a result, their HR leaders must be able to adapt to new trends and usher new innovations in the organisation.
To keep up with these needs, HR leaders can no longer rely on traditional practices and workflows. Here are five reasons why they are relying on automation to scale growth and meet these talent needs of high-performing organisations.
#1 Automation frees up their time for high-value tasks
Freeing HR leaders from time-consuming processes such as drafting JDs and offer letters, and tasks like responding to relentless queries from hundreds of potential and new hires, HR software frees up their time for high-value and high-impact tasks. These include empathetic practices like communicating rejections to candidates, managing complex issues such as lack of diversity and collaboration, and strategic initiatives such as brand value management: all of which are key needs of fast-growing organisations. Moreover, automation also enables them to approach these tasks free of fatigue and frustration, enabling them to be their best through all interactions.
#2 Automated processes improve employee experience
In growing organisations, delayed salary disbursals, lack of regular appraisals, and diminished employee engagement can increase attrition rates. Growing attrition, in turn, means that HR teams must fill a growing number of vacancies in the organisation. While automation mitigates these challenges by elevating the employee experience it also improves the experience of HR teams. Finally, automation can eliminate the need for an HR hotline as the task of addressing HR queries can now be taken on by chatbots.
#3 It helps them meet the needs of high-volume hiring
Growing organisations exhibit high-volume hiring requirements. However, when the cost of a new hire amounts to $4,000 on average, high-volume hiring can start adding to the costs of scaling growth. Accelerated hiring powered by automation can not only help HR leaders handle a higher volume of candidates, but also, significantly reduce the cost per hire.
#4 Automation helps them gain insights into performance
The key premise of scaling growth is maintaining existing growth, which calls for waterproof performance management workflows. Continuous feedback, progress tracking, and transparency are often pushed to hindsight when HR teams are forced to attend to more urgent tasks. Automating performance management workflows through platforms can help HR leaders gain valuable insights into performance through simple visualisations. This helps them focus on growth initiatives while ensuring that the rest of the workforce operates at peak performance.
# It helps them turn culture into more than a buzzword
In today’s age of hybrid work, culture is no longer diffused in the office space. Instead, it must be infused intentionally into work processes that define the hybrid worker’s experience. A key priority for HR leaders in 2022 according to Gartner, achieving connectedness in organisational culture cannot happen without innovation and a rethinking of age-old axioms. When diverse talent exhibits more attrition through the continuing Great Resignation, turning culture into more than a buzzword will be the key to retaining diverse talent and scaling growth.
Automation is therefore turning into a key necessity for HR leaders in ushering corporate growth in today’s business landscape – and this is unlikely to change in the coming years.
(The author is Mr. Karan Jain, Co-Founder, HROne and the views expressed in this article are his own)
