Blog Article

How to Automate HR Processes With HR Chatbots?

Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on April 11th, 2024 6:11 am | 6-min read

What do you think of chatbots? Yes, that little chat box that opens up on practically every website you visit these days. I, as a customer, think they are a big help and sometimes pretty entertaining as well! And, of course, we have talked at length about the benefits of chatbots for businesses. However, today we have a totally different conversation about chatbots - HR chatbots. Sometimes called HR bots or employee engagement chatbots, HR chatbots are especially useful if you plan to automate HR processes. Appy Pie Connect has an entire section on HR applications and integrations to help you with effective human resources automation.*


Until recently, people still were asking questions like - “what is a chatbot” and “how to make a chatbot”. It did seem like an intimidating process that could only be understood only by the techies. However, Appy Pie - the leader in no-code development, has brought about a significant shift in the way chatbots are made. In fact, you can easily go ahead and explore our HR chatbot maker right now!

Table of Contents


Introduction

Human resource management or HR management is an integral part of any organization, big or small. The responsibilities of HR personnel extend beyond simple hiring processes. There are multiple tasks like onboarding, training, ensuring adherence to local labor laws, and more! However, most of these processes are still accomplished manually, which takes up a lot of their productive time. As this realization hits them hard, HR departments across the world are changing… for the better. Quite like the other fields across different industries, the HR world is also moving towards automation. Hence, HR professionals must accept that all the HR processes that can be automated will eventually be automated.

What is HR automation?

Before you jump to the conclusion that HR workflow automation makes HR employees obsolete, let me tell you what it actually means. HR automation is simply the process of improving the efficiency of the HR department by eliminating all the mundane, repetitive tasks from the to-dos of the employees. As a result of the automation of human resources workflow processes, particularly the menial manual tasks, the employees can focus on decision making and strategy formulation. The biggest benefits of HR process automation are the amount of time and money you can save. However, I will get a little more into benefits later in the blog. One of the most critical aspects of HR automation is the use of chatbots in HR. Let’s first understand a few basic concepts viz. -
  • What is an HR chatbot,
  • What are the benefits of a chatbot, and
  • How HR bots help in HR automation.

What is an HR chatbot?

An HR chatbot is a virtual assistant of a kind that can hold almost human-like interactions with employees and prospective employees at any time. However, there are many uses of HR chatbots that go beyond just conversations. They help with automated interview scheduling, candidate screening, and answering frequently asked questions, among other things. Two of the most important benefits of HR chatbots include a massive amount of time and round-the-clock communication. Apart from these two advantages, there is a lot more that needs to be discussed on the topic. Let’s discuss.

Benefits of chatbots in HR

Now that we have discussed what an HR chatbot is and how it works let’s discuss the merits or benefits of employee engagement chatbots for businesses and HR professionals.
  • Saves time
    • An HR chatbot can be programmed to respond to all the frequently asked employee queries. A chatbot is tireless in responding in real-time, irrespective of the time of the day. Hence, an HR chatbot definitely saves an employee’s time while ensuring greater engagement. These benefits can further be enhanced through numerous integrations with other tool stacks often used by other departments within the organization.
  • Reduces costs
    • Most of the menial, manual tasks are often time-consuming. This means there is a lot of workload, which can only be handled by additional HR staff who spend a significant number of productive work hours on the tasks mentioned above. Once you integrate an HR chatbot into your organization’s human resources workflow processes, all the manual tasks are effectively taken care of automatically. Eventually, this automation reduces the need for hiring additional resources and brings down the costs of operations by a significant amount.
  • Enhances onboarding experience
    • A positive onboarding experience has a significant impact on talent retention. In fact, this research claims that a well-thought-out onboarding process increases employee retention by 82%! The onboarding process introduces the new employee to the rest of the team and lets you know how to communicate within the organization. AI-driven human resources chatbots make this experience fun and engaging. It does not require any special training to use an HR bot, making it simple for the employees to familiarize themselves with the resources, systems, and policies.
  • Boosts employee productivity
    • Handling multiple repetitive and manual tasks often lowers the productivity of an employee. Chatbots can be used for human resources automation to transfer these tasks to technology so that the employees can breathe a little easy and focus on the tasks that need their attention. HR chatbots are known to increase employee productivity by more than 70%. Manual tasks like applying for leaves, approving vacation time, looking for employee details, finding information related to company policies, and more can be easily handled by the HR bots.
  • Supports remote work
    • Flexible timings and remote work have become the norm, particularly since most companies have been forced to implement work from home. Employee chatbots have helped ease this stress on the HR staff by providing round-the-clock support and easy access to information. Human resources chatbots can automate attendance and time-sheet reporting to reduce overall employee frustrations in these interactions.
  • Increases employee engagement
    • The advantages of the conversational interface of the HR chatbot for employee engagement are many. Chatbots in HR eliminate the need for complicated search terms and strategies just to find a relevant piece of information. As the employee engagement chatbots use natural language processing, employees can ask questions as they would in spoken form. Also, the employees can work easily in collaboration with their own and other teams with the help of chatbots for communication.
  • Boosts reputation
    • Providing cutting-edge technology to the employees creates a positive impact on employer branding. The fact that you make efforts to improve the experience employees have within the organization sends out a message that you care for them. Hence, not only are you improving the overall efficiency of your organization, but also improving your reputation as an employer.
  • Provides quick & timely feedback
    • Whether you are looking for employee feedback on new policies and the recruitment process or giving your employees feedback on their performance, an employee chatbot is the most efficient way ahead. Employees are more comfortable providing feedback on chatbots as compared to one-on-one conversations. The feedback process implemented through an employee chatbot is unbiased and a lot quicker.

How to automate HR processes with HR bots?

At this point, we have understood the basic HR chatbot functioning and HR automation. Now, let’s discuss how HR bots can help with HR workflow automation.
  1. Resume screening and onboarding
    2. The HR department in any company is overburdened, and the resume screening and onboarding processes take up the maximum time. It is, therefore, natural that these processes are either overlooked or skimmed through. HR bots can filter through resumes, shortlist deserving candidates, send follow-up emails, and even schedule interviews in record time. Once the candidates have joined your organization, you can onboard them through your HR chatbots to automatically take care of the most common processes.
  2. Candidate query resolution
    3. Most candidates have similar questions as they are applying for a job or are going through the recruitment process. If everyone posts the same queries to the HR department, their mailboxes are going to be filled up to the brim. An HR chatbot can ensure that all the common candidate queries are resolved in real-time instead of a long-drawn email exchange between an overworked HR department and the candidates.
  3. Streamlined employee support
    4. Employees often end up treating the HR personnel like Google. I mean, whenever they have a question about anything in the organization, they directly approach the HR staff. This query resolution can easily be automated by integrating an HR chatbot to address and resolve the continuous barrage of small to big questions from employees across the board.
  4. Automation in routine HR processes
    5. Apart from recruitment, onboarding, and employee support, automation through HR bots can help with multiple other regular HR processes that can be automated. Some of these processes include attendance tracking, leave application and approvals, employee feedback and surveys, goal tracking, and performance reviews, among other things.
  5. Round the clock support
    6. It is common for offices to have employees working in staggered shifts. Hence, there would always be a time slot where HR staff may not be available to provide instant support. An employee chatbot is available around the clock. It means the basic queries about company policies, leave balance, attendance, etc., can be answered by the HR chatbot.

Benefits of HR process automation

We have talked at length about applications of chatbots in HR, the benefits of HR chatbots, and how they can help with HR workflow automation. In this section, we will talk about the benefits of HR automation.
  1. Improved efficiency - As data processing and sharing is sped up with HR automation, the overall efficiency of the department and the organization as a whole will improve.

  2. Lower employee turnover - Losing employees in quick succession is detrimental to employer reputation and is costly. Human resource automation is proven to increase employee engagement, thus reducing employee turnover.

  3. Reduce paperwork - Automated HR processes are often accompanied by increased digitization. With reduced paperwork, you reduce storage requirements and costs of material as well.

  4. Reduced risk of compliance violations - As all processes are automated, there is little to no scope of human errors when it comes to following procedures and adherence to local legal policies.

  5. Reduced cost of hiring - HR workflow automation significantly reduces the burden on HR staff, taking over the bulk of the tasks involved in the hiring process, automatically bringing down the costs involved in hiring processes.

Conclusion

To sum up, it is easy to say that HR automation is the definite future. Appy Pie makes sure that you, as a business owner or HR professionals are equipped with the best of the technologies in the most affordable and easy-to-use format. Have you tried out our workflow automation platform? It’s time.
Do you agree that HR automation with chatbots is the future for us? I would love to read your opinion on this. Leave a comment below, and I’ll be happy to respond!

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Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie

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