Onboarding RPA in your HR group

Now that it seems that everyone is shutting down again, and some day we will reopen, I thought it would be great to discuss this entire process and the benefit of automating this as an RPA event.

Onboarding and Offboarding are two recent events that we have seen a substantial amount of RPA activity around.  This particular use case affects HR and Finance groups.  HR obviously is responsible for the termination and rehire of these people along with finding them, etc.  Finance is responsible for forecasting the reduction or increase in cost attributed to these ebbs and flows of staff.  So without further delay, here is what the typical process automation would look like:

We are going to start purely with the system interaction and then move into the net benefits later.  So let’s look at onboarding and see what it takes systematically.

1. Recruiting process
   1. Recruiting (search)
   2. Interview
   3. Offer
   4. Accept or decline
   5. Background/security check/drug screen (if you do this)
2. Hiring
   1. HR System for payroll and personal tracking
   2. Time entry system
   3. Email and technology systems access permanent to the role
   4. Training and team introduction

Ongoing retention won’t be covered in this article, but is important.

So let’s think about how this process plays out, just from an offer sent, offer accepted.

1. Generate offer letter with appropriate details
   1. Form letter for role generated
   2. Email and possibly printed offer sent (or use e-signature software)
   3. From here you have a couple of possible outcomes
      1. Accept
         1. Route to background check
         2. Route to screen
         3. Route next steps to candidate
         4. Route to hiring manager
      2. Decline
         1. Route to hiring manager
         2. Route feedback to recruiting group and corporate culture group for review
      3. Redline
         1. Route to hiring manager for additional review.
         2. Resend to candidate

If you think about what was just outlined, that simple 13 stepped process can take hours of a hiring manager, recruiter and legal time.  By automating these tasks out you reduce the amount of time spent in the mundane process which lets you focus on filling the position, understanding the potential employee, making sure they meet all screening qualifications and satisfying possible revenging enhancing opportunities for your organization.  Recently our company went through this process to hire salespeople.  We needed to add 2 resources in order to bring in our expected revenue gap based on quotas.  Those references needed to be filled in and executed in an expected time frame to meet our onboarding process and expected time to close for new salespeople.  Our linked systems were Linkedin for recruiting, gmail, DocuSign, and instant checkmate.

By doing this we were able to evaluate and hire the 2 people in the time frame allocated to our hiring department.  In this case we went from 235 people, to 5 final interviews, to 2 offers that were accepted.  This entire process was executed in 6 weeks, including interviews and screening.  Interview scheduling took 4 weeks.

There are several other HR related use cases that we have done from territory setup in sales, to termination procedures and all in between.  It is important to identify the processes at a high level, consolidate them, and then start working through them individually to execute.  The big differentiator between companies who are RPA practitioners is how they evaluate your current state processes and create a plan for you to start your journey.  That journey can start with one department, or a holistic vision.  Regardless, know that your most expensive process to automate is almost always your first.