6 HR automation tools to streamline your workflows

Every profession is increasingly relying on technology to do their jobs better, and it’s no different for HR.

Contrary to popular belief, the rise in automation won’t lead to HR departments being “replaced.” Instead, it’ll maximize the efficiency of crucial processes and free up time for these professionals to focus on the strategic aspect of their role.

We’ll use this post to explore how HR automation software can support your fast-growing organization — and we'll give you six of the best tools on the market today.

What is HR automation?

HR automation is the streamlining of key HR processes and tasks through technology. It frees up resources for HR teams, allowing them to spend more time focusing on strategic activities and less time completing mundane, repetitive tasks. 

With the right HR tools, HR departments are able to automate a range of time-consuming manual tasks and HR processes, including payroll and benefits administration, employee communications, onboarding new hires, offboarding employees, and numerous others.

Benefits of HR automation

In addition to improved efficiency, HR automation software also offers numerous other benefits, including:

• Cost and time savings on manual HR tasks
• A more seamless experience for employees
• Improved organization, efficiency, and tracking
• Access to more data to improve decision-making

Choosing the right tools for your organization

Even before you begin the implementation process, the most important thing you can do is choose the right tools for your company. This means looking for a solution that solves a real problem that you have — rather than just picking one with the fanciest bells and whistles. 

To help, here are a few criteria you can use to figure out which HR automation software is a good fit for your needs:

• Customization. When choosing an automation tool, you want to make sure it’s flexible enough to customize to your organization’s specific wants and needs. For instance, does your employee communications software allow you to personalize every message and target a specific group of recipients? Can you edit the questions with your performance management software or add your own to align with how you run evaluation cycles?
• Integrations. You also want to make sure your HR automation software can integrate into your existing systems — whether it’s Slack or your HRIS data. This ensures a smooth transition and a cohesive experience for your employees.
• Analytics. Regardless of which HR process you automate, your software should be able to provide analytics about its performance. Why? If you don’t know what isn’t working, you can’t fix it. So whether it understands how your messaging is landing with employees or tracking diversity metrics within your talent pool, make sure your HR solution can give you the data you need to make informed decisions.
• Scalability. Keep in mind that an HR automation tool that works well for a small company may not produce the same results for a larger company. That’s where scalability is vital. Look for solutions that can grow *with your business and evolve with your changing goals.

You can use this criterion to guide the questions you want to ask potential vendors. For example, ask questions like, “Can you tell me how your solution is customizable?” or “What integrations do you offer?” These can give you the insights you need to find the best solution for your organization.

5 HR processes you need to automate

While there’s an endless number of HR processes you can automate, here are the top five we recommend prioritizing — along with recommendations for HR software vendors to consider.

1) Employee communications

HR teams must regularly communicate with their employees to keep an organization running smoothly. But it’s not just to keep your workforce updated about company events. 

The quality of your internal communications can significantly impact employee-focused outcomes. For instance, more than 80% of employees say communication is critical to developing trust with their employers.

However, between acknowledging birthdays, making important company announcements, and celebrating promotions, there’s an overwhelming number of touchpoints that HR teams need to manage — especially at a fast-growth organization. That’s where HR automation software can play an important role.

With Pyn, you can automate hundreds of messages and schedule them days, months, or even years in advance to go out at key moments — whether you're sending new managers guidance on how to run their first 1:1 or welcoming new hires to the team.

2) Payroll and benefits

Managing payroll and benefits is about more than just making sure employees get paid on time. It requires HR departments to calculate, withhold, and pay the appropriate taxes for every worker. There’s also a ton of administrative work that comes with overseeing payroll and employee benefits — not to mention the local and federal laws you need to familiarize yourself with.

While it may be possible to manually handle payroll and benefits as a small business, it becomes unmanageable once your organization reaches a certain size. That’s why most companies eventually turn to HR automation software to run these processes on their behalf. 

3) Recruiting

Hiring talent is a resource-intensive process. It can take weeks, or even months, to fill a single position and requires recruiters to conduct cold outreach to potential candidates, manage job postings and advertisements, and set up multiple interviews—among other things.

Without automating parts of the recruiting process, it’s all too easy to let quality candidates slip through the cracks or have people drop out of your interviewing process because of a poor experience. In fact, 60% of recruiters say that they sometimes or often lose candidates before they even schedule the first interview.

4) Performance management

Performance reviews are an essential process that every company needs. They can inform promotion decisions, identify the people who need more support, and create a clear pathway to success for every employee. However, there’s a lot that goes into the performance management process.

To conduct annual or bi-annual performance reviews, you need to develop templated questions, prompt people to complete their peer reviews and self-reflections, and send out regular reminders to ensure the process is completed on time. This can be a huge burden to put on both HR teams and managers, which is where automation can make a difference. 

5) Onboarding

Employee onboarding is one of the most critical processes at your organization. An organized, comprehensive onboarding process not only sets your new employees up for success but can also impact employee-focused outcomes like retention and productivity.

But creating a seamless onboarding experience isn’t an easy task. It requires HR teams to gather paperwork, send out messages and materials at key moments, and coordinate with multiple parties. HR software can automate many of these tasks, so you never forget to send your new hire a welcome note on their first day or lose track of their essential documents. 

6 HR automation tools to optimize your workflows

There is no shortage of great tools for HR process automation available today, but a few software solutions stand above the rest. If you would like to boost employee performance and employee engagement while at the same time eliminating human error and freeing up your HR staff, here are the top six HR automation tools to consider:

1) Pyn

Pyn is an employee experience platform designed to help HR professionals guide and support employees throughout every phase of their journey. 

With Pyn, you can map out the employee journey and identify the most important moments and phases using your existing HRIS data. From there, Pyn empowers HR teams to send automated yet personalized messages to support employees through these moments that matter. 

Whether it's celebrating an employee's birthday with a personalized message or guiding new hires through the onboarding process, Pyn makes it easy to communicate with employees at scale without sacrificing the human touch.

Key features

• AI and machine learning algorithms for automated, personalized employee messaging
• Behavioral nudges for scaling company culture and values
• Hundreds of employee communication templates for further streamlining a variety of HR tasks
• Utilizes HRIS data to define the moments that matter most to your employees
• Facilitates pre-onboarding communications and a 90-day onboarding journey for new hires

2) BambooHR

BambooHR is an all-in-one HR system that empowers organizations to automate numerous HR processes. With BambooHR, you'll be able to track hours worked, manage benefits enrollment, and automatically run payroll all from a single platform. 

These capabilities eliminate the need for manual data entry and manual approval processes across numerous HR tasks, freeing your HR team to spend more time focusing on other important responsibilities.

Key features

• Applicant tracking tools for a more efficient recruiting/hiring process
• Manager and employee self-service tools that make it easy for your employees to find the information they need
• Detailed reporting and analytics for tracking employee well-being, engagement, and satisfaction
• Helpful integrations with many other HR tools

3) Zenefits

Zenefits is another all-in-one HR platform, but it is most widely used for its top-tier benefits administration, payroll, and talent management capabilities. 

In addition to its user-friendly and helpful self-service functionality for employees, Zenefits also supports HR teams and company leadership, helping you find the best benefits packages for your business. 

Key features

• Time-tracking via pre-configured overtime calculations, time card fraud safeguards, and mobile clock-in/clock-out features
• Allows employees to view benefits options, enroll, and manage benefits completely online
• Automated tax filing

4) Gusto

Gusto is a platform that provides HR automation tools for payroll and benefits administration, time and attendance tracking, and hiring/onboarding. 

For a more efficient hiring process, Gusto makes it easy to create job postings and offer letters via customizable templates for both. From there, Gusto streamlines the onboarding process via custom onboarding checklists and the ability to integrate with applicant tracking software. 

Key features

• Customizable onboarding checklists
• Job posting and offer letter templates
• Automated payroll and tax filing
• Automated time-tracking

5) Lever

Lever is a talent relationship management platform and applicant tracking software that is designed to optimize an organization's recruiting and hiring processes. 

Along with automating numerous recruiting and hiring tasks, Lever also serves as a centralized platform that organizes candidate information and makes it easy for your team to manage candidate interactions. This makes it easy for your company to begin building positive relationships with its new hires the moment the recruiting process begins.

Key features

• Automated applicant tracking and interview scheduling
• Automated resume parsing features
• Customizable job posting and offer letter templates
• A single dashboard for managing every candidate interaction

6) Culture Amp

84% of employees who feel their company culture is positive are highly engaged — compared to just 22% of employees who don’t report a positive company culture. If you want to boost the employee experience at your company by establishing a better workplace culture, check out Culture Amp.

With Culture Amp, you have access to tools designed to help with employee engagement, satisfaction, and well-being. Culture Amp also empowers organizations to scale their culture and values via goals/OKR tracking, templates for 1:1 meetings, tools for requesting and providing feedback, and a Skills Coach for helping managers improve their leadership skills.

Key features

• 30+ survey templates for collecting a variety of employee feedback and metrics
• Tools for automated 360-degree feedback
• Performance review templates and workflows
• Goals/OKR tracking for keeping employees aligned toward common objectives

Unlock a world of efficiency and savings with Pyn

Automating HR processes and HR workflows can save companies a lot of time and money. It can also improve the employee experience and keep your employees engaged, satisfied, and productive.

If you want to automate HR communication in a way that is still targeted and personalized, Pyn can help! To see the estimated ROI that Pyn can offer your organization, check out Pyn's ROI calculator. See why organizations all over the world use Pyn to automate some of their most critical HR tasks: Sign up for a free Pyn demo today!