6min
Today's HR professionals are truly multi-tasking heroes! They handle everything from hiring to onboarding to managing complex workplace situations to handling employee benefits, all the while staying on top of the changing regulations. Usually, this means working with multiple platforms, a host of vendors, spreadsheets, paperwork...and more paperwork. Wouldn't it be great to automate some of these tasks to make the days more manageable?
We asked 10 HR professionals as well as executives what they would like to see automated at their workplace - or what they recommend others to automate. Here’s what they had to say:
1. Automate PTO Management
“With respect to this time of year when employees begin to plan how to use their time off, I would simply say that the automation of PTO would save a lot of time for employees and managers alike. The use of a PTO system that would automate prorated time off based on start dates, one that accounts for any previous roll-over PTO time, and one that accounts for the type of time off (i.e. sick, holiday or vacation, etc.) would be ideal. For proactive planning, it would be great to have a PTO system that sends reminders intermittently, so there is less of a rush at year-end to plan for time off.” Rebecca Krattiger-Higgins, HR Consultant with Red Clover.
2. Automate Medical Bill Reconciliation
"If we could automate one thing, it would be medical invoice reconciliations. Excellus does not have a monthly bill that can be printed online. They only issue paper bills which force a manual process to reconcile the monthly medical bill. An online bill in excel format would be amazing!" Meg Schmitt, Payroll & Benefits, LSI Solutions.
3. Automate New Hire Reporting
“I would love to see automated benefits enrollment info sent to new hires in the appropriate time frame after their hire and before their eligibility date comes up. Most of my clients have 30-60 day windows during which new employees must wait to sign up for benefits- but then someone in their office (or me, as their HR Consultant) has to send over or share the forms or enrollment links, the SPD information, provide reminders on the sign-up window, etc. I'd love to have that come to new hires automatically so I can be sure they have it in hand before we chat about their choices. The SPDs can be cumbersome and chunky and a simple way for them to be pushed that info in a format they can keep or via a link that is evergreen would be great!” Jill Santopietro Panall, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, HR Consultant and Founder of 21Oak HR Consulting, LLC
4. Automate Safety & Security of Employee Data
"Ensure the safety and security of all employee data, treat their healthcare information like it is your own. Work with your benefits administrator to ensure the system works with your IT networks.” Matthew W. Burr, Human Resources Consultant, Burr Consulting, LLC.
5. Automate Calculating the Benefits
"Calculating and sending benefits to people is a tedious and time-consuming task that can be automated and allow people to work on analytical or strategic tasks." CEO, Sergey Yudovskiy, CEO of electroNeek Robotics.
6. Get Rid of Spreadsheets!
"A smoother sign-up process through automation would be a great help to remove the manual spreadsheets and processing.” Sophie Bibb, People Partner at iwoca.
7. Automate Benefits Based on Usage
“We are an all-remote company, so there are specific benefits that are granted to our employees including access to coworking offices worldwide. What makes it hard to manage is that granting access is not equal to actually using a coworking space as many prefer to work from home. Hence, it becomes important to allocate the right pro-rata benefit to everyone based on their actual usage. Automating the allocation and usage data reconciliation would lift an administrative burden on our side.” Lilia Stoyanov, CEO of Transformify.
8. Automate the Medical Insurance Process
“I would automate the entire medical insurance process. There is really no reason for there to be any paper involved in this process anymore. It's incredibly important to automate medical benefits because doing so helps reduce errors since it is much more organized and all in one readily accessible place. Additionally, if something does go wrong and we need to contact the insurance company, we would have all the accurate and up-to-date information right in front of us instead of fumbling through files while on the phone with the insurance company.” Nate Masterson, HR Manager at Maple Holistics.
9. Automate the Enrollment Process
“The enrollment process… good automation of benefits gives the HR team more time to do what we love, be good business partners and strive to make a difference in the workplace!” Jilian Dimitt, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, Human Resources Director at Optima Office, Inc.
10. Automate Everything Possible!
“Automate everything possible is the short answer. By everything I mean payroll, time off (vacation, sick, maternity, sabbatical…), insurance (health, dental, vision, life), onboarding documents (NDAs, confidentiality agreements, contracts…). It would be so much easier if everything were under one roof so we wouldn’t have to go back and forth and have spreadsheets, and pdfs, and more log-ins for other sites.” Ben Walker, the CEO for Transcription Outsourcing, LLC.
Need help automating your benefits processes? Contact us to demo our easy-to-integrate solution that'll give you more time to focus on what matters.
