The Genesis of the Digital HR Practice

What is Human Resource Management (HRM)?

Broadly speaking, this encompasses all the processes and practices for managing people within an organization.

As with most ideas within our business world, HRM is not a fixed concept. The chart below illustrates how HRM has evolved through the years.

Source: https://hrdictionaryblog.com/

The Evolution of HRM

One notable trend has been the shift in focus away from human resource management, and towards human capital development (HCD).

For the former, you are concerned with administrative issues like HRMS, payroll, workforce management (hourly scheduling), expense management, contingent workforce management, employee leave management, and other more administrative or transactional parts of managing people. Pretty much mundane, repetitive and time-consuming tasks that numb you after a while.

As for the latter, you are interested in developmental tasks such as recruiting and onboarding, leadership development, succession planning, performance management, pay for performance, career development, training, workforce planning, employee collaboration, and other organizational design-related practices and systems. In short, activities that are dynamic, challenging and frankly, far more value-creating.

Clearly, the needs of the modern organizations and employees (especially Millennials) has shifted from HRM to HCD. This is mainly driven by a confluence of factors including the rise of the service economy and new research findings such as Motivation 3.0.

Unfortunately, many of the HR practitioners that we speak to are still stuck in yesteryears. A majority of them are still pre-occupied with administrative or transactional tasks.

No surprises then that HR is not perceived highly within these organizations, by their employees or management. More damningly, overwhelmed with mundane work, these HR practitioners are a disengaged lot with low employee satisfaction. Kind of ironic when you consider the raison d'être of HR in the first place.

Well, this need not be the case.

A Digital HR Practice

What these organizations need is a Digital HR Practice.

One where routine HR processes like payroll administration are digitized, standardized and automated by software bots, leaving the HR practitioner with sufficient bandwidth to pursue more meaningful and value-creating work such as employee career development.

That is, taking the “robots” out of the HR practitioners and allowing them to break out of their legacy mould.

With a digital HR Practice, HR practitioners can now effect an up to 67% reduction in HR service delivery costs (important since HR is a cost centre), while delivering the speed and accuracy that management has long craved. In other words, a Digital HR Practice is also one that is cheaper, faster and better!

Begin with Quick Wins

Sounds interesting?

One simple step to take now is to look for quick wins for your new Digital HR Practice.

Start by identifying one or two processes within your department that is taking way too much resources while delivering minimal value to you and your organization.

Some of the processes that you might want to consider automating include:

• Employee onboarding

• Employee offboarding

• Benefits administration

• Time & attendance

• Employee master data

• Updating of payroll

• Updating of employee particulars

Although each individual process may differ across organizations, there are still common threads. Typically, processes that involve multiple data entry, affect disparate IT systems, have high transaction volumes, are rule-based, etc. are excellent candidates for automation.

Reinvent and Re-imagine your HR

As the business world fixates on Digital Transformation and the Future of Work, you too should consider how you can digitize your HR practice and future-proof your career. A Digital HR Practice where your administrative tasks are automated by software bots could be just what you need.

CFB Bots is exhibiting at the HR Summit & Expo Asia 2017 held on May 3 to 4 at Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre, Singapore. We will be showcasing some of our HR bots that are helping our clients to automate their manual and tedious HR processes. To learn more, do drop by booth 71 to have a chat with us.

Thanks for reading!

###

For more insights and to keep up to date on the latest in Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence, you can subscribe to our mailing list on the right. Also, like us on Facebook to follow our latest blog posts. Lastly, feel free to drop us your comments in the comment box below. We would love dearly to hear from you.