Today, many businesses are making a shift from old and obsolete technologies to emerging ones to boost productivity, improve efficiency, and increase agility. This may be one of the reasons why the demand for emerging technologies is growing at a great pace, and the enterprises that want to stay competitive must adapt to this change, or else they will become laggards and be thrown out of the competition.
Robotic Process Automation, popular known as RPA, is one such emerging technology that enterprises across verticals are vouching for. According to a report by Computer Economics, a leading IT research firm, 20% of all organizations have adopted Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as of June 2021, an uptick from the 13% adoption rate back in 2020. Furthermore, the global Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market size is estimated to grow from 9.2 billion USD in 2022 to 26.0 billion USD by 2027, at a CAGR of 23.1%. From the statistics, it is clear that RPA is making positive strides by disrupting a slew of business processes.
Robotic Process Automation in HR – What it is
Robotic Process Automation is a proven solution to improve the data management capabilities of HR professionals. When it comes to RPA implementation, businesses consider HR as the first department for automation due to the high volume of rule-based tasks that are manual, recurring, and time-intensive in nature and require little or no human intervention. With RPA in HR, enterprises can automate more than 50% of standard business operations performed by HR professionals including recruitment and onboarding, employee induction and training, payroll processing, compensation modifications, compliance management & reporting, data management, exit management, and more.
By offloading day-to-day administrative and operational tasks to digital workers (intelligent bots), enterprises can free HR professionals from wasting their efforts on manual processes and assign them more strategic and decision-making roles. Now, let’s dive deep into the key reasons why businesses should embrace RPA in HR.
4 Strong Reasons to Adopt Robotic Process Automation in HR
HR is a cost-centric field and RPA can play a critical role in lowering the overall HR-related costs. For a second, imagine the level of expenses that enterprises can save by offloading manual and repetitive tasks to digital workers (bots). Besides cost savings, Robotic Process Automation implementation can help HR professionals in many other ways. Let’s find it out.
1) Increased Productivity
One of the key reasons why enterprises should consider RPA implementation in HR is that it drives the overall productivity of the HR department. The day-to-day administrative and operational tasks that used to take hours of HR professionals can now be done in a few minutes with the help of Robotic Process Automation.
In a research report by EY, 93% of the time spent by HR employees is on mundane and repetitive tasks. With RPA implementation in HR, over 50% of tasks performed by HR experts can be automated right from CV screening & shortlisting candidates, employee data management, and expense management to calculation of shift allowance, attendance tracking, background verification for new hires, and more. According to UiPath, RPA in HR can increase HR professionals’ capacity by 40%.
2) Improved Accuracy
Many enterprises are going through digital transformation, and as a result, an overwhelming amount of digital records are being produced that need to be maintained by HR professionals. With the sheer volume of records being processed manually, HR professionals are likely to make mistakes, irrespective of how careful they are.
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Robotic Process Automation in HR can help enterprises cut down on human errors by automating all the manual and repetitive tasks performed by HR professionals. The pre-coded technology used by RPA enables digital workers to deliver precise output and decisions, which far outperforms its human equivalents. In other words, RPA makes records management error-free and compliant with the standard business laws without hiring a dedicated specialist to double-check every field. According to UiPath, RPA delivers 100% data accuracy with zero errors when implemented correctly.
3) Better Talent Acquistion
The talent shortage is one of the biggest challenges faced by employers these days. According to a survey conducted by ManpowerGroup, nearly 75% of companies globally reported talent shortages and faced difficulty in finding the talent they are looking for. The same report indicates that the global talent shortage reaches a 16-year high. Fortunately, recruiters can overcome this challenge and choose the right talent with the help of Robotic Process Automation. By leveraging the potential of RPA, HR professionals can not only fill gaps between different departments but also streamline the entire talent acquisition process. According to UiPath, RPA can help recruiters acquire talent 10 times faster.
4) Improve Employee Satisfaction and Lower Attrition Rate
Did you know? More than 47 million Americans quit their jobs voluntarily in 2021, as per the report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Furthermore, 40% of workers in the United States are considering quitting their jobs. This clearly indicates that the dawn of ‘The Great Resignation’ has just begun and it is showing no signs of slowing down.
Employers were already struggling with the talent shortage and now ‘The Great Resignation’ has further increased their problems. If reports were to be believed more than 85 million jobs globally could go unfilled by 2030, due to talent shortages, resulting in a loss of 8.5 trillion USD in unrealized annual revenues. The good news is that enterprises can effectively deal with this problem by introducing Robotic Process Automation in HR. As stated above, RPA can automate mundane and repetitive tasks in the HR department, which in turn, opens up more room for high-value decision-based tasks such as employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention, which contributes to the company’s overall growth.
Summing Up
Robotic Process Automation in HR comes with a host of benefits from increased productivity to improved efficiency, better accuracy, great scalability, and cost savings. The scope of RPA in HR is growing with every passing year and is not just limited to rule-based tasks that are repetitive and time-intensive in nature.
