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HR teams undoubtedly devote a lot of energy and resources to the onboarding of new employees – rightly so.  Last month we looked at how investing in automation could transform this process, but what happens when the work lifecycle of a staff member ends and the time comes for them to leave?  Offboarding an employee is so much more than a simple signed letter of resignation, a collection for a goodbye gift and drinks after work on their last day.  We look at why correct offboarding should not be overlooked, how to automate the process and why automation will make it fool-proof.

Why implement an official offboarding process?

According to Aberdeen Research¹, most organisations do not have a formal offboarding process.  Astonishing really given the obvious threats this poses to company security, legal compliance, data breaches and the financial implications.  It also overlooks the opportunities to gather feedback from departing staff to improve employee satisfaction.   Offboarding is a key part of an employee’s experience in an organisation so completing this journey with a formal, specific process ensures a safe and professional goodbye.  Reputation is everything and maintaining a good one to the very end should be a priority.

Why automate the offboarding process?

There is a lot to consider when offboarding, so planning and thinking ahead to create digital workflows to address all key areas prevents improvisation, repetition, time wasting and ensures nothing falls through the cracks.   Investing in the correct technology with the right tools for your organisation to achieve this is key.

At AUTTO we help companies to simplify their offboarding process easily, quickly and cost effectively.  Our no-code solution is simple (no special programming skills are required) so anyone can create workflows and use them.  Key aspects we would urge organisations who are serious about their offboarding to automate include:

1. All formal documentation by departing employee – create workflows to, for example, digitally sign a letter of resignation, non-compete contracts (which can be automatically routed to the legal team) sign off benefits, tax forms and terminate payroll on the correct day (again alerts to the finance department can be automatically created here).  There may be other important documents specific to an organisation – all can be automated.
   
2. Exit interview surveys – gathering information and views from a departing employee has the greatest potential for discovery of areas for improvement, to help prevent further loss of talent, but also to create a positive lasting impression on the leaver that their views were valued.  Whilst the human touch is important here, automating questionnaires to help gather this information helps save time.  Key questions such as why the leaver started looking for a new job, what they appreciated most about their role and suggestions for improving the working environment could be rated to provide key metrics but then explored in greater depth face-to-face.
3. Create a “tick-box” automation for all departments to ensure 100% accuracy in offboarding  – automate communications from a central point to ensure,  for example,  IT has revoked access to all systems and hardware, company information and org charts are updated, office management has collected all keys, access cards, uniform etc.  This is a very laborious, tedious, time consuming yet vital job.  Missing key parts of this process leaves companies open to both physical and digital security breaches which more importantly could have an impact on legal compliance. Relying purely on humans to carry out these offboarding tasks is risky – automate to ensure accuracy and save time and repetition.
4. Effective transfer of knowledge – essentially a “how to” document.  A successor may or may not have been appointed but using automation to create a document on “how to do” a leaver’s job is invaluable.  A summary of daily tasks, regular meetings, file locations, key contacts etc. Workflows can be tailored to gather this information producing an important manual for existing or new employees.
5. Create a portal for Alumni – just saying goodbye and sending leavers on their way is a lost opportunity to continue to build relationships.  We acknowledge that this may not be the case for some former employees, but the majority of people depart on reasonable or good terms and this should be nurtured.  Creating an alumni programme with a digital hub helps to maintain a good relationship with leavers, recruit new talent through recommendation and possibly even see a re-employment of highly skilled former employees.  

Interested in seeing what AUTTO can do for your business? Why not try a FREE TRIAL!

Reference List:

¹Aberdeen.com – 29% of organisations currently have a formal offboarding process

Onboarding new employees is a time intensive, complicated and often tedious process for new employees and HR departments alike.  Credit checks, new employee data gathering, ordering of new IT systems, orientation scheduling and payroll management are some of the preboarding paperwork required even before start day.  Then there are the reams of forms that new employees inevitably find themselves filling in on their first day – not the most motivating start to any new job. 

These issues could be eradicated by automating the whole process – but only 2% of organisations do¹. More worryingly, only 12% of employees strongly agree their company does a great job of onboarding².  Something is clearly going wrong. 

At AUTTO we help organisations to simplify their onboarding process easily and quickly. No special programming skills are required to use AUTTO so anyone can use it.  We have seen the incredible benefits using automation can bring and want to share them with you – so here we present our top reasons why all HR departments should automate the onboarding process:

• Cuts vast amounts of wasted time 

Forms, forms and more forms!  Excessive paperwork in the hiring process is one of the problems for new hires and HR department alike. New personnel fill in lots of forms. Often on paper and often by hand.  Typically, a new hire will be given 41 administrative tasks and 3 documents to complete³.  The HR department needs to create and customise each of these forms for every new employee and then manually input all the information into their system.  Dull and laborious for all we are sure you’ll agree.  Automation can eliminate this waste of time. It can generate bespoke new hire forms from templates tailored for each new hire – each form can be cross populated with repetitive information, so your new staff member doesn’t have to repeatedly fill out the same information on different forms. Plus time is saved by your HR department as they no longer spend hours typing up the information.

• Ensure accuracy and speed 

Streamline document processing. Usually, new hires will submit documentation by hand, via post or email, running the risk it gets lost, forgotten or even sent to the wrong place. These forms may contain information that needs to be passed along to other departments or organisations, such as equipment orders, desk allocation or IT setups. These run the same risk of being sent to the wrong place or buried in a busy inbox and all this too-ing and fro-ing significantly delays the whole process and the risk of human error increases.

Onboarding automation erases these delays and ensures accuracy — documentation is routed electronically, according to pre-set “rules”. Once forms are submitted, they’re automatically sent to the department or organisation that needs to complete the next step.  If nothing happens then a reminder is generated and sent. Additionally, more time is saved and accuracy ensured as there’s no more manual data entry as everything uploads automatically.   

• Automate hiring approvals to support regulatory needs

Onboarding new people comes with regulatory requirements – whether that be tax declarations, checking Right to Work or references and financial information. By taking the automation route, tax and other official forms are easily generated and if required sent to the new employee for information entry, digital signatures etc.  A digital paper trail is created and saved centrally to meet regulatory requirements.

• Employee satisfaction from day one

Proper onboarding sets the tone.  An effective and supportive onboarding experience for new employees can create loyalty from day one.  Plus, HR staff stop spending vast amounts of time ‘paper pushing’, feel more valued and can focus their time and energies on more strategic HR issues.   Overall staff who are happier and more satisfied in their roles are prepared to work and perform better.  Importantly this makes them likely to speak more highly of your organisation – which in turn helps YOU attract top talent.  

And given people who did NOT have a positive new hire user experience⁴ were twice as likely to seek a different opportunity in the near future, how can you afford not to automate your onboarding? 

Get in touch with us to discuss all your automation needs – Let’s Chat

References:

¹ Experian HR Onboarding Trends report Nov 2019
² Sage “The Changing the Face of HR Research” report at gallup.com/workplace/242252/employee-experience.aspx
³ SaplingHR, 2021
⁴ Digitate survey – SUPER CIO: What the CIO sees—that other people don’t

Human Resources (HR) is a department dominated by process heavy administrative tasks.  These tasks are often repetitive and still largely managed by manual processes – highly time consuming, inefficient and costly.  As other parts of the organisation look to map a successful future using digital transformation, the HR department must follow.  Intelligent workflow automation of certain processes has the potential to catapult the efficiency of the HR function to new heights.  Benefits are huge – the internal client base has a far better experience with the HR team and reducing the time spent on tedious manual tasks motivates staff to focus on more complex strategic tasks.

We at AUTTO acknowledge the vital role HR plays in bespoke human interaction and can never see a time where HR will be fully automated.  However, automation can be used to support this important human element provided by HR.  Consider the benefits of automating the following: 

1. Streamlining Onboarding

This must be the most obvious and strongest argument for automation.  With a third of senior HR management believing they are trying to create a better candidate experience for new employees but only 12% of employees strongly agreeing their company does a great job onboarding¹, something is clearly going wrong. Employee satisfaction starts from day one and facing a day or more of endless form filling when starting a new role does not set the right tone.  We would recommend using automation to improve for example:

• All new joiner and user forms
• IT equipment set up
• HR profile creation
• Orientation scheduling

2.Employee day-to-day administration

In our opinion, the second most obvious area to automate.  Imagine a department where the following is seamlessly processed and takes a fraction of the time it currently wastes:

• Employee data entry and change of status updates
• Annual leave requests
• Payroll and Audit checks
• Tax form generation

3.Why automate these HR tasks?

The benefits of automating these paper-heavy repetitive tasks are enormous.  Some of the key ones we can see include:

• Greater employee satisfaction, less frustration and time wasted
• Improvement of reputation as a good ‘people place’ valuing  its employees which in turn can attract higher talent
• Time saved on admin which can be used on more complex strategic tasks internally within the department
• Reduction of human error and the complexities solved in correcting these
• Improve poor audit trails  – automation automatically generates audit logs to ensure compliance and reduce error
• Produces analytics to validate HR decisions 
• Replaces ageing systems that don’t integrate or “talk” to other systems across the enterprise
• Saving the actual physical and environmental cost of paper shuffling!

The best part? No, IT knowledge is needed! Using a simple drag and drop function, AUTTO is user-friendly and easy to implement. Helping you spend more time on your employees and growing the business! Why not try a FREE TRIAL?

References:
¹Sage “The Changing the Face of HR Research” report at gallup.com/workplace/242252/employee-experience.aspx