Making Your HR Tech Stack Work for You

Automation is about taking the ‘human labor’ out of processes and letting machines, software, and technology take over.  But what about those who are in the business of managing ‘human labor’? Harvard Business Review recently noted, “The secret to making [AI] work, is the business model itself, where machines and humans are integrated to complement each other. Machines do repetitive and automated tasks and will always be more precise and faster. However, those uniquely human skills of creativity, care, intuition, adaptability, and innovation are increasingly imperative to success.”  

Where can machines do repetitive, automated HR tasks so that HR teams can spend more time creating, innovating, and adapting? These are questions that many HR professionals are asking themselves and their technology partners. The good news is that several tools can help you adjust your current work streams to enable your employees to do their best work. 

Read on to learn how to build automation into existing HR processes and better understand the difference between manual tasks and high value strategy.

HR is frequently seen as a large “need to have” cost center for some businesses, rather than a department that can help optimize budgets and create ROI. However, there are existing tools out there that can help you build automation–you just need to be open to it.  “Challenge your status quo on what technology exists, there is usually a solution to your pain point,” said Nikki Morello, COO of Mailgun. 

In the new age of remote work and easy access to integrative technology, there are new ways to digitize paper-based processes like paper applications, or word document onboarding checklists. Take Workable for example. “Workable has really great reporting when it comes to your talent acquisition funnel. You can look at where people may be getting stuck and how long the process is taking for candidates to get to onboarding”, Mykaela Doane, Workable user and Head of People and Talent at Quantive. Workable allows HR leaders to identify pain points and offers easy ways to streamline a process with easy automated tasks based on a candidate’s position in the funnel. 

HR leaders often end up in the weeds doing manual tasks, especially in rapid-growth companies, but this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. “You have to get in the weeds to get out of them, especially when your company is in a rapid growth mode, tactical work is enabling us to think about the high-value strategy” said Nikki Morello. Being in the weeds allows leaders to identify pain points, and where additional investment can be made to make processes more efficient. If you don’t know the tasks it makes it hard to identify a strategy for automation. 

When you are in the business of hiring people, it’s important to make sure you have the ability to reduce human error. “We are hiring so fast and our hiring managers have a lot more on their plate than just hiring. We were finding that some candidates were not getting disqualification emails. Workable allowed us to set up automatic disqualification emails. Automation allows for consistency; I think that is really important for the candidate”, said Mykaela Doane. Creating automated tasks for things as simple as a disqualification allows for the talent acquisition team to communicate with  the candidate instantaneously, and avoid things falling through the cracks. 

A tech stack with integrations  can also help your teams avoid human error. “Integration is everything. Your tools [tech stack] talking to each other makes or breaks this [automation],” noted Nikki Morello. Seeking integration for all your HR tools can allow for better automation and less room for human error. For example, Workable integrates with many existing tech products, like Checkr, for running your background checks. A Workable user can easily run a background check without leaving Workable. The user initiates the background check, the candidate is emailed, and once the check is completed the status will be listed next to the candidate profile in Workable. The best part is most checks are completed within 24 hours of initiating them. This automated process saves time for both the candidate and the talent acquisition team and leaves less room for error. 

HR automation doesn’t have to be like a daunting task. There is likely an automated process to address your organization’s pain points and with the right leaders, strategy, and technology in place you can easily streamline those workflows.

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