As is well known, automation plays an important role in the lives of people in their companies. It has helped to continue to innovate while keeping costs low and employees focused on critical business development activities.
A key question then arises: In what ways can technology and automation be leveraged to keep people focused on those tasks that only humans can do?
Here are some ideas considered relevant.
1. Automate the management of personnel enrollment.
Designing an employee onboarding program is a priority in any company that requires this management on a recurring basis. An excellent onboarding not only improves the springboard stage [CC1] (time during which the person is able to produce optimally), but also sets new hires up for success in ways that positively impact retention, profitability and revenue.
To devote time to designing onboarding content, rather than the scheduling, paperwork and other administrative efforts that can bog down any company, an automated process for collecting documents and signatures through HR is key. This saves several hours per hire and allows time to be spent on onboarding efforts that truly move needles.
Identify which tasks can be automated (and which cannot).
Automation can help your employees delegate tasks that don't require a human touch so they can focus on those that do.
But it is important to determine which tasks can be automated. The best candidates are those that must be performed more than once and always in the same way.
Some communication tasks, such as email marketing or reminders, can be easily scheduled and automated. In some cases, content creation itself can be automated, but would require an employee to review and approve it. To get ideas on when and what to automate, it is very important to talk to your employees. They are usually the ones who know best which tasks would be best to automate and which ones, on the other hand, automation could make their job more difficult.
3. Automate communication with applicants for a position.
Another area where automation can help is in repetitive manual processes, such as delivering information and following up with job candidates. It takes a lot of time and dedication for recruiters to manually send follow-up messages to applicants: set a reminder, create the email, and hopefully personalize it a bit. This can take at least five minutes per email.
Automating this one step can save hours a day, so recruiters can focus their attention on interviewing and getting a personality read on candidates, something that definitely only people can do.
4. Reduce administrative work hours
Automating routine tasks frees employees to do more creative and critical work. For example, an automated process capable of reporting payments and reimbursements, which frees up internal teams to interact with customers or evaluate how best to spend the company's budget.
Similarly, it is possible to automate other regular processes, such as weekly employee self-assessments to generate automatic reports and dump them into a spreadsheet, so that managers can spend more time coaching and supporting teams, rather than collecting and organizing data.
Automating these systems reduces delays and errors and gives staff more room to create and innovate. Most workers appreciate being free from monotonous duties, especially during peak weeks or seasons.
5. Automating project status updates
Workflow automation helps create a better system across all teams in a company. It can be used in a variety of situations and areas, from human resources and accounting, to marketing and sales, to operations and IT.
Many communications can be automated by updating the status of a project. This replaces the process of searching through emails, sending multiple messages and waiting for the recipient to respond, and helps reduce costly delays and performance errors.
In addition, teams feel more connected than ever. They can be seen to be more engaged and customer-focused, with much of the burden of their role lightened by automation.
