Digitally Enabled HR Administration: A Critical Factor in Adding Value in HR Operations

Payroll and HR administration, commonly called HR Operations, arestill largely transactional areas in most traditional HR organizations– with limited added value for the company and their employees, and significant time and costs trapped in their execution.

This is mainly caused, in most corporations, by the combination of several factors as unstructured inflows, manual operations in data inputs and outputs, and time losses connected to signature handling and document storage – which reduce efficiency that could otherwise be released for value-adding activities. This starting situation can be solved by a digitally enabled HR administration flow that addresses and solves these critical factors.

Current HR Administration Processes Are Traditionally Lacking Digital Or Organizational Solutions.

The traditional HR organization features an administration and payroll process that may typically be looking like the following scheme:

In this configuration, let’s imagine that a certain number of users (as Employees, Line Managers, HR Business Partners, other HR internal Services) want to request to HR Payroll and HR Administration the delivery of a certain product – e.g. a letter, a statement, a contract or a report.

In a traditional set-up, these users will be allowed to use a multitude of channels to contact HR Operations - as workflows, self-service options, but also phone, e-mails, or even direct visits to the department by simply stepping in the office.

Once the request is received, Payroll and HR Administration departments will typically have to integrate the respective corrective inputs, manually, into the system backbone (e.g. in SuccessFactors, WorkDay, or any other employee and administration platform), which may even require multiple entries when the company runs different platforms for e.g. payroll and administration.

These inputs will then be used, once in the system, to manually complete the outputs starting from a template – as for example a letter, which will finally have to be manually signed, manually handed over to the employee, and manually stored in the HR archives.

A Digital Approach To The HR Payroll And Administration Cycle.

In order to release the added value trapped in the situation described, digitally enabled solutions can be implemented in several steps of the process to reduce the total lead-time of the cycle, to provide better control for HR and for Line Managers and employees on the status and progress of their requests, and to finally better monitor the process efficiency – giving back time and money to the organization.

Once a digital approach is applied, the situation above can change as shown in the following scheme:

In this new configuration, while the users remain the same, there is a limitation in terms of communication channels they can use in getting in touch with HR – as unstructured vehicles like phone calls or e-mails will be replaced by a stricter usage of workflows and self-service solutions, linked toa “ticketing system” that traces the lead time of each request to monitor delivery and service performance.

Although this is traditionally perceived as a limitation, as it reduces the personal touch of HR Operations in the handling of the requests, a proper change management could show to the stakeholders the clear advantages of the solution: better traceability of the requests, and, more importantly, the possibilities for the inputs to be written back directly in the payroll and administration system.

System Write-Back and Robotics: The Core of an HR Operations Digital Solution.

Once the requests of the managers and employees are captured in a structured ticketing / workflow / self-service system, it is then possible to interface this system directly with the payroll and administration backbone – avoiding manual entries from the HR Operations team, which limits at the same time the time spent and the possibility of mistakes.

If we think about a promotion request, for example, the managers can be offered the possibility to handle it directly via a structured workflow, which will allow the manager to enter the percentage of promotional increase to be applied according to the internal HR rules in the digital tool itself, and this percentage can then flow directly into the payroll and administration system with no further manual input or control – as it already exists in a digital format.

Finally, this can be part of a fully closed digital cycle by adding two additional features.

The first one is the generation of documents via robotics - which can be directly triggered by the same workflow: in the example before, the described promotion workflow can at the same time trigger a robot to generate a promotion letter, based on a standard template which is pre-selected by the robot using criteria as the employee organizational level, language or location, which can be automatically completed without human intervention, significantly reducing time spent or wrong manual entries.

The second one is the electronic management of the process of storage and signature of the documents via a digital solution, so that the document can be sent directly via the system to all stakeholders (as HR, managers or employees) for a legally compliant digital signature process, and finally, stored in an electronic vault accessible by the same stakeholders to e.g. download the document or find it for future reference.

The return on investment: giving back value to the business.

All these technologies are already widely available on the market and are often already integrated in the core HR payroll and administration systems used in most companies – requiring implementation efforts and costs which may be lower than HR leadership may think, and which are heavily repaid in terms of return of investment and customer satisfaction as well.

The process described, in case the data quality in the system is already healthy, may be typically implemented from beginning to end in two to three years – releasing in a relatively short time a massive value to the business in terms of efficiency, traceability and output quality, and representing one of the best possible investments in handling modern HR Operations.