HR activities like hiring, onboarding, performance review, learning management, etc, are essential to business growth, but these activities are often capital intensive and time-consuming. Besides saving up on time and money, streamlining your HR processes can help your HR department work more effectively, improve compliance, eliminate payroll errors, and enhance reporting capabilities.

Here are six ways your HR department can cut down on costs and save valuable time:

 

1. Switching to virtual onboarding 

 

Physical onboarding of new hires will require the business to spend money on paper documents, securing a venue, among other logistics costs. The costs of operating with a virtual onboarding process are significantly lower as participants can join from their various locations with only a computer and a stable internet connection. 

Additionally, a virtual onboarding process with pre-recorded video sessions can further help to save the time of the HR department and other employees who would have served as facilitators, ensuring that productivity continues.

 

2. Reducing paper documentation 

 

Using paper documents is not only unsustainable for the environment, but can also be an inefficient system of storing data for the HR department. Paper documents can easily be misplaced, causing the loss of important data. It also increases the possibility of leaking sensitive information, which could affect the organisation in several ways. Also, saving records on paper means that information retrieval will take a lot of time, especially for large organisations with commensurately large data sets.

 

3. Proactively managing conflicts 

 

Employee vs employer lawsuits are not so common in this part of the world, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Court cases can be expensive and time-consuming, so it’s ideal to take proactive steps and ensure that they do not arise in the first place.

The HR department should document communications and agreements with employees to avoid the risk of litigation from a misunderstanding of company policies. Additionally, HR should ensure the proper storage of data, as this could be the tipping point if a lawsuit does occur.

 

4. Focusing on employee retention 

 

High employee turnover is a significant challenge for businesses today. According to SHRM, it is more efficient to retain a quality employee than to recruit, train and orient a replacement employee of the same quality.

A fair amount of time and funds are invested in the hiring and onboarding process, all of which are wasted by unnecessary and early staff exits. By proactively developing and executing an employee retention plan, HR can save costs associated with high employee turnover.

 

5. Automating processes in the HR department 

 

HR processes such as preparing payroll, leave management, performance appraisals, and even recruitment, can be quite time-consuming. A McKinsey report states that 56% of the typical ‘hire to retire’ tasks could be automated with technology, allowing HR to focus on more value-adding tasks.

With an end-to-end HR software like SeamlessHRMS, repetitive HR tasks across the HR value chain can be automated, with ROI in the productive hours saved for the HR department, and even for the staff in general. SeamlessHRMS also allows for easy storage and retrieval of data and allows admin to set up workflow approvals, so the relevant personnel is alerted when their attention is required.

 

6. Utilising Employee Self Service (ESS) 

 

If you’re considering an HRMS purchase, you should consider one with the Employee Self-Service feature. With the ESS feature, your employees can actively participate in HR processes by making requests, updating their personal information, responding to queries, among others. 

The ESS saves HR tons of time that would have been spent fielding requests and going through mail trails. It makes it easy to manage things like leave, requisitions, performance appraisals, onboarding, exits, and more.

Employees can access the HRMS at any time and see information about their job profile, leave days, and company announcements on their dashboard, which reduces the time HR spends responding to such questions.