These days, your HR department is central to the success of your business, but it can also be a millstone around your neck. If it’s not functioning properly, you can have complaints from workers.

Fortunately, technology is playing a role in improving how HR departments function. Here’s what’s happening:

Use Modern Human Resource Information Systems

The first thing you’ll want to do is start using modern human resource information systems (HRIS). If your staff don’t know how to use these types of software, send them on HR courses immediately. 

HRIS is a way for you to maintain all the information that you require about your workers in a unified platform. Centralized data administration reduces errors by double-digit percentages and ensures that you track everything you need to know about your workers more accurately. This way, you can see how many hours they’ve spent in the office, their vacation entitlements, and so on.

Use Automated Tracking Systems

Another thing you’ll want to do is look into using automated tracking systems for hiring new staff. Many HR departments have chaotic inboxes because they don’t have a standard, structured pipeline for interviewing and onboarding new individuals. Fortunately, with automated tracking systems, you can get rid of a lot of the headache of this type of work.

These integrate with calendars and schedule interviews seamlessly, so there’s less clicking and manual work required. They can also provide you with information on the stage that a particular candidate is on in your pipeline, so you can send them the right communications. Some automated tracking systems can even integrate with mailing automation systems, so candidates receive emails in a timely manner.

Use Digital Onboarding

If you’re not using digital onboarding already, you should be. Digital onboarding is one of the best ways to bring a new person into your firm without all of the regular administrative overhead.

For example, high-tech onboarding flows shift all of the document signing, tax forms, information, and hardware provisioning to the cloud and get it all done before day one. Then the workers can simply walk in, find their desk, and start learning how to do their new job. You can also get them to sign compliance documents via e-signature and provide them with training on company culture at their own pace.

Add Digital Feedback and Performance Reports

If you haven’t done so already, it’s a good idea to add digital feedback and performance reports. These reduce the time it takes HR departments to manually file these and distribute them to workers. Many top companies around the globe now have real-time dashboards that show workers how they’re performing and what they can do to improve their status. It can help to have lightweight weekly check-ins or automated employee net promoter score surveys.

Automate Compliance

Finally, HR departments can massively improve their performance by automating compliance. For example, they should be using software to automatically monitor labor laws and handle complex multi-state and international tax compliance. Doing this reduces legal risks massively and assists standard operating procedures.