If you missed our Blog about HR software configurability, you might not be up to speed about the importance of configuration tools. It's a fallacy that the 'out-of-the-box' functionality of all Cloud HR software will meet the needs of every organisation. That's why you need to make sure that your HR software has powerful configuration options that enable you to adapt it to your unique HR processes. Essentially, you need to be able to bend your HR software to your will because we all know that one size does not fit all HR automation needs. If you haven't yet started your digital transformation and you're in the market for a solution that works for your business, here are five configuration tools your HR software needs to follow HR best practice in your organisation.

One of our most popular blog posts last year was about automating employee lifecycle management. In another recent blog, we also shared how things like a regularly updated HR systems and IT ecosystem integration strategy, in addition to a culture of change can improve business outcomes by an average of 15%. We've explored these issues separately in the past, but it's what's possible by bringing them all together that holds the key to unlocking roadblocks in the employee lifecycle. In this week's HR Blog we explore how #HRtech can help you remove roadblocks, improve the employee experience and generate better business outcomes.

Every year, Sierra-Cedar publish their HR Systems Survey Report. For their 2020 report, they surveyed 1,892 unique organisations representing a total workforce of 22.2 million employees and contingent workers across the globe. They've been conducting this research for over 20 years now, and they've used that data to chart the course of the impact of HR software's use by businesses globally. This year's survey covers HR software adoption, trends for applications, deployment options, vendor feedback, expenditures, and value achieved for the categories of different applications used. If your organisation hasn't yet embarked on a digital transformation journey and you're looking for intel, then this report sets an industry benchmark. Let's take a look at what 20 years of HR Software has done for business.

In 2018, HR.com and Iron Mountain conducted a study on The State of HR Automation in Mid-Sized Organisations. Findings reveal that most HR departments are STILL bogged down by manual administrative tasks. A majority of respondents (59%) said the HR professionals in their organisation spend over half their time on manual administrative tasks. This is supported by other HR.com research. In their Advancing HR Function study, half of respondents predicted that 'HR will be transformed into a much more strategic function as administrative duties are automated or outsourced to others.' And yet, despite all the advancements in technology, HR often still finds itself trying to balance two roles: Rule-driven bureaucrat and strategically motivated talent manager. If HR Professionals want to take a leading role in redesigning work, such a redesign needs to amplify efficiencies through automation so as to have the bandwidth to become a more strategic function. In this blog we explore where HR automation can produce the greatest efficiency gains across the employee lifecycle.

As we've illustrated in the previous blogs in the this series on whether to automate or not to automate, automation of the right tasks and processes in the employee lifecycle is critical to business success. is now a key pillar of the future of work and implementing a human-automation collaboration is essential to any digital transformation program. But what process and functions should you automate first? And how do you make sure that it is roles as opposed to people, that are made redundant? EY has done considerable research in this regard and this blog explores how their best practice advice on how to automate intelligently.

Automation will certainly change human resources as we know it, but the impact will reach far beyond the HR department to encompass the entire employee lifecycle. Organisations that manage such transformation successfully will be those in which leaders and HR professionals recognise what tasks machines can do significantly better than humans and automate only those tasks. Focusing human effort on activities that humans do best will result in a happier, more engaged and more productive workforce overall. Designing such an organisation requires a much longer-term people strategy (one that goes beyond the usual succession planning), coupled with transparent dialogue with the existing workforce about the benefits of automation on what it means for them. This Blog in the HR automation series explores the broader implications that automation will have on leadership, employees and the entity of the organisation itself.

The technological revolution has brought with it both hope and fear, excitement and trepidation. The jury is still out on whether the advances that technology enables will be overwhelmingly positive or negative. The reality is that it we humans need to take responsibility for making well informed, intelligent decisions about how we use and apply technology in our lives to ensure that the results are positive. Nowhere is that more relevant than in the workplace. Over the next few weeks, we will be doing a deep dive into HR automation to unpack the latest research, best practice and trends about how to apply HR automation to the employee lifecycle. This blog series will highlight what every leader and HR professional needs to be aware of in order to make those fully informed decisions about HR automation so as to ensure that the effects those decisions have on employees and the workforce generally, create positive results for all parties. Not to mention for the future of HR and the future of work.

Whether your business is in Local Government, Aged-Care, Manufacturing, Retail, Hospitality, Not for profit or Financial Services, there are key areas that each of these industries will benefit from in terms of HR automation. Different industries require similar automation and there are generic HR tasks across all business types that can be automated in a standardised manner. If manual, repetitive tasks haven't been automated within your organisation, then you run the risk of your people spending all their energy on such tasks and not having the impetus left to work in a way that contributes to human contact, which is what builds engagement and enhances culture.