Efficiency. It’s one of those watchwords all companies subscribe to wanting. And yes, HR is no less immune to this than any other department. But while we might all talk about the need for making HR more efficient, what have companies actually done to make their HR processes better?
To try and answer this, we asked a number of HR professionals and business executives this exact question.
From starting a culture committee to implementing remote recruiting, here are eight ways companies are right now making their HR processes more efficient:
1) Started a Culture Committee
“Company culture is a huge component of modern HR, especially in remote companies such as ours. To lighten the load on our sole HR employee, we created a culture committee to delegate the duty of making our virtual office a more welcoming and positive environment. The committee consists of members of different departments and it meets monthly to discuss important topics and conceive culture projects and initiatives.”
Tasia Duske, CEO of Museum Hack
2) Use holiday management software for leave processing
“We use holiday management software to request and manage annual leave. This has made it much easier for me, as an employee, to book holidays, look at my remaining entitlement, and see who is off when on the company calendar. My manager also gets a better overview of annual leave and when cover may be needed. Using software reduces some of the steps needed to email back and forth or update a spreadsheet on holidays, as all the information you need is in one place.”
Camille Brouard, senior marketing executive, myhrtoolkit
3) Developed step-by-step hiring process for team leaders
“Historically, we would let our team leaders go through our hiring process on their own. This resulted in a few bad hires, which ultimately cost our company a lot of money. More recently we developed a simple step-by-step hiring process that the team leader can easily implement. On top of that, we added an extra confirmation call with team leaders, potential new employees, and our recruitment manager. This call is to ensure we have a second pair of eyes on the process and make sure the person being assessed is the right fit for our company. It’s a little bit more effort upfront, but in the long run, this saves us a lot of money and headaches.”
Paw Vej, recruitment manager and team leader at Financer.com Ltd
4) Integrated payroll with HR Systems via Paylocity
“For my medium-sized and steadily growing recruiting firm, managing payroll as a separate task from other employee-related operations was becoming increasingly difficult due to double entries and errors. For instance, whenever we onboarded someone or made a salary adjustment, it would require changes in both payroll and HR systems, sometimes resulting in mismatched data. That is when I decided to integrate payroll with our HR activities like time and attendance, headcount reporting, etc. I have found Paylocity’s HR software the most helpful for this purpose, with its cloud-based payroll and useful HR automation options. It has greatly eliminated our previous dilemma of erroneous paychecks and data errors while saving precious time that was spent making double entries in separate systems.”
Anjela Mangrum, president of Mangrum Career Solutions
5) Digitized the HR department to cut paperwork
“We’ve made our HR department more efficient by digitizing a lot of paperwork, especially for onboarding. Getting new employees acclimatized is one of the hardest and most time-consuming aspects of HR, and we wanted to streamline the process, especially now that we’re in the era of remote work. First, we developed a reliable employee self-service portal that frees up time for everyone by allowing employees to access information and perform tasks without having to contact HR directly. Next, we worked to digitize as much of the onboarding process as possible, making it quicker and easier for employees to sign essential documents and get started acclimatizing even before their first day.”
Brandon Adcock, co-founder and CEO of Nugenix
6) Used social recruiting to find better candidates faster
“Today’s talent acquisition is rife with challenges. Finding candidates has become harder than ever, let alone finding qualified candidates. Social recruiting has been an effective method for us to not only reach more candidates but reach qualified passive candidates as well. This is because the organic network effect of social media allows you to reach a wider talent audience than you might through other means. With around 70% of Americans using social media daily and 86% of job seekers using social media in their job search, social media is the place candidates frequent most. Using social media for recruiting has made our talent acquisition more effective, efficient, and faster.”
Debora Roland, VP of human resources, CareerArc
7) Made channel of communication transparent
“A big hindrance to HR efficiency is simply redirecting questions to the correct source of information. This is almost always a result of a lack of clarity around the channel of communication. To make our HR processes more efficient overall, we’ve found that simply distributing an outline of our communication structure to everyone involved has saved us hundreds of forwarded emails, wasted time on irrelevant queries, and frustration from delays related to inquiries. Each and every person knows who should be contacted about specific matters, and who they should reach out to first before taking the next steps. It saves a lot of time and resources, and it is such a simple solution I’m amazed it is so uncommon.”
Gates Little, president and CEO of altLINE Sobanco
8) Implemented remote recruiting
“Before the pandemic, we started doing initial interview rounds remotely – via video. With the advent of Covid-19, we started building on this and a lot more of our recruiting process is now done remotely. We have virtual workplace tours and online presentations during the recruitment process. In-person interviews are reserved for final round interviews, and only if the candidate is working in the office. Many employees are remote workers who live in other cities. Interviewing remotely is time-saving and it creates more flexibility to be available for interviews for both the candidate and the employer. It also means that if we are advertising for a remote position, we can interview candidates in any area of the country.”
Sharon Terera, HR consultant at Afrolovely