How is Robotic Process Automation Transforming HR & Recruitment Domain?

Thanks to the limitless power of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology, robots have become a sensation in the Human Resource (HR) industry. It is transforming the face of the HR industry and fueling innovation at a rapid pace.

As we all know, the HR domain is considered as one of the most labor-intensive industries where a significant part of daily operations is executed in doing administrative work. RPA helps in automating all such repetitive work to provide enterprises various benefits. Its adoption assists organizations to improve the pace of HR operations while maintaining great accuracy.

Not to forget by reducing operating costs along with maintaining compliances, RPA enables enterprises to bring greater value to business operations. This RPA blog tells you in detail how it is changing the face of the HR industry. Especially the recruitment space.

Ask any personnel working in the HR industry about how challenging and time-consuming the process of resume shortlisting is. You will realize how much effort and energy are drained in executing this vital HR work. That too with no surety about getting the best results. As an HR professional needs to check on various HR systems and search out the best candidates amongst millions listed there as per the eligibility, experience, and desired skill set. Effective usage of robotic process automation in HR can help you get the best candidates in no time. The HR bots automatically read the job descriptions, search potential candidates using intelligent algorithms, and send the shortlisted resumes to HR professionals. Implementation of robotic process automation in HR helps reduce manual work by 80% and increases the pace of business processes.

• Using HR process automation, applicants can get auto-notifications about their recruitment stages and selection status. No need for HR professionals to dial up or email all candidates to let them know about their employment status. It brings transparency along with reduced overhead on people dealing in HR operations.
• RPA applications allow the HR department to collect, process, analyze documents required before joining. It brings great efficiency in HR services.
• By integrating with legacy HR systems, robotic process automation bot can assist in doing background verification as well. RPA software is capable of reading information from candidature form and can cross-check information with backend databases. It raises red flags when it finds something suspicious and sends updates to HR professionals without any human intervention.
• While onboarding, HR people need to send a lot of stuff that is majorly similar with minor changes as per role, department, pay scale, etc. For example, offer letter, appointment letter, welcome mail, etc. Also, there are other tasks as well in the on-boarding process like giving brief about company policies, demo about the company and overall business, etc. You can automate a major part of such work and help employees to save time for other work. When RPA tools are well combined with e-learning concepts, it improves overall learning efficiency and outcomes as well. Robotic process automation in HR helps in shortening the time required to complete training in order to make a candidate project ready.
• Robotic process automation proves beneficial in creating user accounts, email addresses, and enabling access to various vital IT resources to initiate their task.

It is yet another manual task that consumes much of employees’ time working in the HR department. Late submission of receipts, missing receipts, delayed approvals, out-of-policy spending, unclear expense claim management are a few concerns that arise during its processing. Manually doing these tasks is not just time-consuming but prone to errors as well. Delayed or improper processing can lead to compliance risks and reduce employee satisfaction. Using robotic process automation coupled with OCR, you can extract data from documents, cross-check claims as per the company’s rules, speed up the approval process by bringing all stakeholders on a digital platform, and auto-update employees about its live status.

It is one of the most data-intensive tasks that require super precision to execute it effectively. A small error can affect employee satisfaction adversely and can bring a bad reputation to the company. Robotic process automation bots reduce the risk rate very significantly and ensure superb accuracy in payroll processing. They help HR professionals to calculate exact net pay after evaluating taxes, analyzing leaves, checking attendance and timesheet data automatically.

Just like onboarding, robotic process automation software can also improve employee exit experience. There are various repetitive tasks at this stage that can be automated using an RPA system like

• Generating exit documents
• Conducting exit surveys/interviews
• Revoking access to various systems/applications
• Processing final payment
• Notifying all stakeholders
• Documentation of handover or knowledge transfer work

British multinational consumer goods company Unilever was facing a stiff challenge in managing its HR operations with desired efficiency and pace. They were searching for a solution that can make their HR operations more employee-friendly. One day they decided to bring greater digitalization to their HR processes using robotic process automation. And guess what? They experienced significant transformation in various forms.

• Time required to manage data-driven operations reduced from 13 minutes to 3 minutes
• Achieved superb accuracy
• They were able to collect 4 times more applications
• Answered candidates 5 times faster
• Reduced operational costs by 35%

Robots are good at executing repetitive tasks. Human expertise is needed for complex tasks. Therefore, if we plan to automate all rule-based tasks using RPA, we can enable HR professionals to focus better on high-value tasks. By doing so, you can gain both ways. One, more efficiency and faster execution of repetitive tasks. Second, the better concentration of employees on business-critical tasks improves productivity and satisfaction.