HR Process Automation: What Is It? What Should You Implement? Examples

What is HR automation and how does it work

Business process automation is a technology that helps companies replace manual tasks performed by employees with processes that are partially or even fully automated. For HR teams, this can mean implementing improvements in various areas, such as:

• automated work schedule management,
• document generation,
• streamlining the recruitment, onboarding, and offboarding processes,
• more efficient leave scheduling and approval.

HR department automations focus primarily on accelerating document processing and improving communication with employees or, in the case of new hires, with potential candidates. In this article, we will describe 5 interesting HR process automations covering HR administration, recruitment, and new employee onboarding.

What is worth automating – 5 interesting HR automations

Below, we present 5 examples of automation that can be used to optimize processes in HR departments.

Recruitment management systems

There are currently many platforms on the market for managing recruitment processes that help recruiters hire new employees more efficiently, while also reducing errors and delays that occur at various stages of recruitment.

The most commonly discussed are ATS systems (short for Applicant Tracking System), used for handling candidate applications. However, more comprehensive solutions are increasingly emerging, combining recruitment with employee pre-onboarding. In such platforms, you can find many different features, including:

• collecting applications from various sources in one place,
• initial analysis and sorting of CVs using artificial intelligence,
• sending pre-prepared messages at specific stages of the recruitment process.

It is worth remembering, however, that not every ATS offers advanced features like interview transcription or integration with other tools used in the company. If you need custom HR automations that off-the-shelf platforms don't provide, it is worth consulting an automation agency. They can expand your existing ATS or connect it with other solutions used by your team.

Automating repetitive tasks in this area is crucial, as more and more applicants are feeling the negative effects of prolonged recruitment processes:

Even with basic methods of verifying and evaluating candidate CVs, the wait time for candidates to be qualified has increased to 198 hours (8 days and 6 hours), and for roles in IT companies, it reaches as many as 15 days. Source: Traffit, 2024 Application Quality Report

We wrote more about the problems candidates notice while job hunting and how business process automation can help solve them in our article: https://www.sagiton.pl/en/blog/what-to-automate-in-hr-automation-of-recruitment-processes

Employee onboarding and offboarding

If your company still manages onboarding and offboarding in Excel spreadsheets, it is worth considering moving these processes to a tool designed for task management. While Excel allows you to track change history, it is easy to overwrite or delete important information when many people are working on the same file. After some time, determining exactly what happened and who was responsible for a specific change can become problematic.

An alternative could be an onboarding or offboarding checklist in a system like ClickUp. Each task there has its own activity history, making it easier to check its status, deadline, and the person responsible. Moreover, a specific rule can create an entire list of tasks once the recruitment process is finished or an employee's departure is reported. If any task is not completed on time, the system can send a reminder to the appropriate person. This allows for better control over the entire process without the need to constantly check a spreadsheet.

We will show more about onboarding automation using a specific case study in the next part of the article.

Automating hard HR processes

Human resources management involves handling a vast amount of documentation, including personal forms, contracts, leave requests, and annexes. Filling out paperwork, routing it to the right people, and tracking the signature process can take HR specialists hours. However, a large portion of these tasks can be streamlined by delegating them to properly integrated tools.

In one of our projects, we used no-code/low-code technology to create forms with built-in validation. Information entered by a client or manager goes directly into the contract draft, and the administrative department can check its status, see who needs to sign next, and send reminders – all from a single application.

This HR automation reduced document processing time by 70%, saving the company approximately 110 hours per month. The entire project was completed in 4 weeks, with a return on investment achieved after 9 months.

Automated time tracking

Just like with ATS systems, there are many off-the-shelf tools on the market for recording and tracking working hours. They help monitor task completion, team workload, and the time spent on specific projects. However, for more specialized processes, a ready-made solution may not always align with a company's specific way of working. In such cases, it is worth implementing automation tailored to the organization's workflow.

For example, at Sagiton, we use ClickUp for time tracking, where employees log the time spent on specific tasks. In parallel, we use a low-code panel we built that pulls information from ClickUp in real time and displays it in one place.

From this panel, employees can submit their timesheets to their supervisors for approval. This allows managers to see exactly which tasks an individual worked on and how much time was spent on them during a given week. It combines convenient time tracking with a review and approval process, eliminating the need to manually move data between multiple tools.

Automated employee reports

In the previous section, we discussed time tracking reports, but these are not the only summaries worth automating in HR. Depending on a company's needs, these can include:

• employee satisfaction surveys – these can be sent out automatically at set intervals, with collected responses immediately presented in clear summaries and visualizations,
• compensation reports – these can show how salary levels change over time across different teams or positions. Artificial intelligence can additionally flag unusual deviations or discrepancies that may warrant further analysis,
• absence and leave reports – these allow for ongoing monitoring of absenteeism, leave utilization, and periods where staffing shortages are more frequent. The final report can be automatically sent to HR or managers on a recurring basis.

Such reporting reduces the time spent preparing recurring summaries and allows for faster identification of trends that require attention. As a result, the HR department can focus on analyzing results and making decisions instead of gathering information from multiple sources every time.

HR automation in practice: Implementing recruitment and onboarding automation

Our client was an IT company that frequently had to conduct recruitment processes due to the nature of its work. The HR department needed help streamlining repetitive and time-consuming tasks related to both candidate selection and the subsequent onboarding of new employees.

Interviews with potential employees were a significant burden. During each meeting, the recruiter would take notes, organize them afterward, and send them to the hiring managers responsible for specific teams. She then had to collect their feedback, send reminders, and determine which candidates should move on to the next stage based on that input.

The situation was similar after an employee was hired. HR coordinated access provisioning, equipment distribution, documentation, and feedback collection. With a larger number of new hires, it was difficult to maintain a consistent process and keep track of progress in real time.

How did we automate these processes?

First, we implemented automatic AI-powered interview analysis. The system generates a meeting transcript and a summary of the most important information about the candidate. The finished material goes directly to the relevant hiring manager, who receives a notification and can immediately provide a rating or add their comments. Thanks to this AI-driven HR automation, all information is gathered in one place, and the person managing the process can easily compare candidates and decide who to invite to the next stage.

We also automated tasks related to onboarding new employees. Prepared checklists and schedules guide both HR and the employee through subsequent stages, while a dashboard allows for real-time monitoring of completed tasks and potential delays.

Automation also covered provisioning access to selected tools, preparing documents related to equipment handover, and updating equipment records. At set intervals, the system also sends out onboarding surveys, with the collected responses funneled into a single location for easy comparison.

Benefits of HR process automation for our client

Automating these processes reduced the number of manual tasks performed by the HR department and accelerated the flow of information between those involved in hiring and onboarding employees.

As a result, the client:

• sped up HR department operations by over 50%,
• saves approximately 200 working hours per month,
• reduced the risk of errors in access provisioning and equipment tracking,
• standardized the new employee onboarding process,
• improved the information exchange process between HR and hiring managers,
• gained the ability to monitor the entire process in one place.

We completed the entire project in 4 weeks, and the return on investment was achieved after about 4 months.
Project cost: EUR 10 500
Automation tools we used: n8n, Fireflies, Clickup

What should you watch out for when implementing HR process automation?

Although automation in HR departments can save employees a significant amount of time, it is worth approaching every project with caution. The security of the systems used is of particular importance, as HR processes a great deal of sensitive employee information.

This does not mean, of course, that HR tasks cannot be streamlined. A proper, strategic approach to automation allows you to combine business benefits with a high level of information protection. When choosing an automation agency, it is therefore worth checking whether they have experience in cybersecurity and can properly ensure the security of employee data.

What are the benefits of implementing HR automation?

The biggest benefit of HR automation is primarily the reduction in time required to carry out repetitive processes, such as preparing documents, reporting, or managing the various stages of recruitment. This allows the HR department to devote more attention to tasks that require expertise, analysis, and direct contact with employees.

Well-planned process automation also helps reduce the number of errors (such as those made during manual data entry) and perform tasks that might have been skipped previously due to being too time-consuming. Good examples include regular employee satisfaction surveys or recurring reports, which can support more effective business management.

If you are thinking about using process automation in your human resources management, please contact us. Our specialist will analyze your process and provide a free quote for a dedicated solution.