HR processes evolve constantly, becoming more complex and requiring more time from your HR team to handle administrative tasks. Instead of optimizing recruitment strategies or developing a thriving work environment, they are busy responding to compliance issues or managing payroll activities.
Streamlining your HR processes and communications is necessary. Simplifying your HR structures can give your team more time to focus on the crucial high-level tasks of revenue generation, growth, and retention.
In this post, we'll review how simplified HR structures streamline your business functions and offer advice for transforming your internal HR for improved efficiency and effectiveness.
Increase Efficiency with Simplified HR
Simplifying HR doesn't cut out vital activities or overlook specific tasks. It streamlines processes to handle crucial functions quickly and efficiently, freeing up your HR department's time. Current HR systems spend about 60% of their time on transactional tasks.
Automation, delegation, and predictive analytics are integral to successful HR team operations. Minimizing manual tasks that usually take up most of their time allows the HR team to focus on employee experience by improving workplace satisfaction and retention rates.
When you simplify HR, you remove unnecessary steps, choose better technology, and learn how to maximize each team member's efficiency. You give your team more time on meaningful tasks without causing frustration or burnout, allowing your company to achieve more.
How to Streamline HR Functions
No matter how small or large your HR department is, you have multiple opportunities to optimize its operation. Here are some processes you can adopt to streamline these systems:
Automate Routine Tasks
Your HR teams could be working overtime and experiencing burnout due to a growing load of routine tasks that could easily be automated or outsourced. Today, you can take advantage of multiple technologies that simplify automation, such as the following:
- Benefits enrollment – Implement self-service portals to allow employees to select benefits based on their needs, with continued access to see their benefits standings
- Document management – Invest in document management software that can help you centralize all employee documents and provide reminders about reviews and compliance documents renewal (i.e., I-9 or W-4 forms)
- Payroll administration – Update your payroll management software to minimize manual entry and centralize all payroll data
Automating routine tasks requires a significant upfront investment in HR technologies before being able to achieve smoother ongoing operations. A less expensive and more efficient way to implement automation is outsourcing, which gives you access to this HR technology and other improvements to your processes.
Top HR partners usually have the latest software solutions to handle automation and give your HR teams the tools they need for other tasks. An HR outsourcing partner can also handle payroll, attendance tracking, benefits administration, and compliance monitoring. They can also give you access to better healthcare benefits and retirement plans to provide your staff with more options.
Access to these resources gives your internal HR team the time and energy to focus on your employees without worrying about the crucial but mundane tasks that keep your business running.
Reduce Errors with Sensitive Information
The rising volume of administrative tasks – without the proper systems to respond to them – can lead to increased errors. When your HR team has to input sensitive or any other data multiple, errors occur. Besides being frustrating and time-consuming to fix, these mistakes could cause compliance issues and significant fines. The IRS collects billions of dollars from businesses that make payroll tax mistakes every year.
Investing in high-quality HR technology minimizes data errors and increases data security. With cyber breaches becoming a serious issue across all industries, HR teams must strengthen their data protection tactics – which is itself a manual task that keeps your team busy.
An HR outsourcing partner will also provide your team access to these relevant technologies, helping you stay on top of sensitive information with less added cost.
Maintain Compliance
Since laws constantly change, monitoring HR compliance is one of your department's most critical and time-consuming tasks. To avoid missing any updates, your HR team must monitor multiple resources and adjust HR processes in real-time.
You minimize the risk of legal issues by streamlining your HR to adhere to labor laws and regulations. That can include accurate overtime and PTO tracking, automating pay transparency, and optimizing recruiting activities.
Improve Employee Experiences
Your HR team may spend more than eight hours weekly on benefits during enrollment periods. It's a stressful and confusing time for all employees. With a self-service portal, you can provide employees access to their benefits and relevant explanations, simplifying enrollment and increasing employee satisfaction.
The focus on employee experiences keeps employees happier and can prevent unfortunate benefits errors and compliance issues. Meanwhile, implementing top HR technologies can position your company as an employer of choice.
Streamlining HR Processes with a Professional Employer Organization
Simplifying the HR structure involves significant investments in growing the HR department and purchasing top-notch technologies. SMBs with limited budgets don't have the resources to achieve these goals and end up putting more strain on their existing HR specialists – which can cause burnout, increase the risk of errors, and deter top talent from your company.
By partnering with a professional employer organization (PEO), you can outsource all mundane tasks to a team of experts with the time, resources, and expertise to handle them seamlessly. In addition, you gain access to comprehensive HR tech that offers multiple automation opportunities.
