Both large companies and yesterday’s startups sooner or later have to grow. To grow, you need to recruit staff, reorganize the company structure, and rely on quality data about processes and employees when making management decisions – all of this is the responsibility of the HR service.
We tell you how HR lives when a company is scaling up and why it is not easy to develop without automation of HR functions.
Challenges for HR when scaling a company
Business scaling is often accompanied by peculiar growing pains, and this is especially noticeable in the HR sphere: outdated processes only get in the way of coping with the increased volume of work, restructuring becomes necessary, and HR management becomes more and more complex. Without the right “treatment” the company will not develop, and the solution can be automation of HR processes. Below – more about the challenges that the HR department faces during the company’s growth.
Structural changes in the organization
The structure of an organization inevitably changes as it grows and develops. Companies go from the simple linear structure of a startup to the complex matrix and hierarchical forms of large corporations. When scaling, the HR department can conduct restructuring and organizational modeling; in advanced companies, these tasks can become one of HR’s most important jobs.
When the workforce grows, making changes to the organizational structure takes more and more time. For operational restructuring it is important that the HR department has convenient and flexible tools for visualization and organizational modeling of the structure – if in a startup it is still possible to keep it in Excel, at the corporate level it is almost impossible.
Organizational modeling is a key tool in restructuring. At every stage of growth, HR plays an important role in modeling and implementing the new organizational structure. HR not only executes restructuring decisions, but also actively participates in the restructuring process.
The need to hyper-automate and unify disparate systems
Hyperautomation is the automation of all HR processes within a single system that will accumulate and store all possible data about employees and HR activities. This is now a trend among both large organizations and those that are just preparing to grow.
One of the main challenges in scaling is the siloed nature of HR tools and data. In mature companies there may be more than 10 HR activities, each with its own set of tools, which seriously complicates data consolidation and evaluation of HR function efficiency as a whole. For example, to correlate the effectiveness of recruitment with the success of new employee onboarding, HR specialists have to manually collect data from different sources, which is time-consuming and reduces the accuracy of analytics.
Companies are increasingly realizing the need to move to a unified HR system, but face serious challenges. Most organizations manage HR functions through a “zoo of systems” – a multitude of disparate tools, which makes it difficult to consolidate data and processes. Those that have already implemented comprehensive HR platforms, however, often find that these solutions are not flexible enough and do not adapt well to the unique needs of the business. In both cases, companies need a flexible, customizable solution that can consolidate all HR processes onto one platform and easily adapt to changing requirements.
«Off-the-shelf boxed products, although they automate most HR processes, are often poorly customizable to the specific needs of a particular company. It can be painful, expensive and time-consuming to adapt a “box” to an organization’s unique business processes»,
— Maria Pizhurina, Product Owner SimpleOne HRMS
Human resource management in times of growth
The scaling up of a company often requires mass recruitment of line employees – a complex task that requires the rapid recruitment of a large number of new employees, and it is important not only to find the right specialists, but also to ensure their successful adaptation.
Onboarding becomes a critical process – it is a complex task that requires the participation of employees from different departments. If in a small company an HR specialist could personally coordinate the adaptation of each newcomer, this approach loses its effectiveness as the business grows. With automated onboarding, the system independently generates and distributes the tasks of recruitment and adaptation between performers, ensuring consistent and high-quality inclusion of new employees in the work without excessive burden on the HR department.
Imbalance between tactical and strategic management
In the absence of automation, the majority of HR professionals’ time is spent on tactical tasks and routine manual operations, such as filling out HR documents, generating Excel reports, processing paper vacation and travel requests, and constant calls and emails to recruit new employees. In such circumstances, there may not be enough resources for strategic planning and development of the HR function, as the HR director is busy with day-to-day tasks.
In the context of company scaling, processes should be automated so that they can be quickly adapted to new conditions. Non-automated processes are difficult to change, any changes require considerable effort and time of HR specialists – because of this HR department is less able to meet the needs of a growing business.
Lack of transparency in the HR function
When a company scales, the HR function risks becoming a “black box” for management. Top management needs to see how HR processes are aligned with the company’s overall strategy, but without proper transparency, it’s difficult to assess exactly what tasks HR specialists perform, how much work they do, and what results they bring to the business. In order for the HR department to effectively support the strategic goals of the organization, its activities must be understandable and measurable.
For rank-and-file employees, scaling a company often means expanding the range of HR services. In order for employees to understand what issues can be addressed to HR, a single point of entry for all HR requests is needed – this will make the entire range of HR services obvious and accessible to employees, regardless of the size of the company.
What is HR Process Automation
HR process automation is the implementation of technologies to optimize and simplify the work of HR department in all aspects of personnel management: from hiring to firing employees.
Technologies become especially demanded when a company starts to grow, as business scaling creates new challenges for HR department, which are difficult to cope with without modern solutions.
How HR process automation contributes to company growth
Automation doesn’t just make the work of the HR department easier – it becomes a catalyst for the growth of the entire company. Implementation of modern HRM-systems helps to overcome “growth diseases” and opens new opportunities for business development.
The company is moving from tactical to strategic management
With successful automation of routine tasks, HR directors may not waste time on task management, but focus on strategic planning and development of the HR function. A strategic approach provides the opportunity to manage the entire employee lifecycle rather than individual fragments, for example, analyzing how the quality of training affects employee performance and career development to identify areas for improvement in L&D processes. If a company fails to reduce the administrative burden on the HR department and free up resources for strategic management, it will be difficult for it to achieve development of the HR function
The quantity and quality of data increases, and more informed management decisions are made
All data is stored centrally, updated in real time and available to all authorized employees – information becomes more consistent. In this way, the business can avoid human error and get a reliable basis for analytics and decision-making.
Automation provides company management with up-to-date and complete information on all HR processes. It becomes possible to automatically generate reports and calculate all HR metrics, which allows the efficiency of processes to be assessed.
Process maturity is growing
Consolidation of all HR processes in a single system helps to reduce the cost and time of business process execution. Instead of a “zoo” of disparate solutions, the company gets a unified digital environment that allows building coordinated processes in all areas of HR activities.
Employee engagement increases
With a single point of contact with the HR department and a catalog of HR services, employees have a clear understanding of what services are available to them and how to get them, and the quality of communication increases. In addition, automation of routine activities allows HR to turn “people-facing” – specialists will be immersed not in bureaucracy, but in employee development, increasing employee engagement and satisfaction.
How to choose a system for automating HR processes: an overview of criteria
When choosing a company’s HR system, you need to consider several important factors that will help to implement and use a suitable solution for a long time.
Criteria for choosing a solution:
- a single system for all HR processes, in line with the trend towards hyper-automization;
- possibility of deep customization for company specifics;
- availability of low-code/no-code tools for quick adaptation of processes;
- scalability of the solution to support business growth;
- easy customization of integrations with other corporate systems to provide a unified information environment in the company.
Functionality of a modern automation platform
A modern HR platform, such as SimpleOne HRMS, allows you to manage all related processes of the HR function: work with the company structure, hire and adapt new employees, evaluate their performance and plan their development, and compile a talent pool.
Modern HR platforms, in line with the trend towards hyper-automization, help to collect disparate data in one system and use it. Important HR metrics can be tracked and reports, dashboards and graphs can be built on their basis in any format. The system should help you make decisions based on up-to-date data.
Ready-made boxed solutions often do not take into account the unique characteristics of companies. HR processes, although they have a common denominator, differ significantly in details from company to company. “Box” solutions do not take these nuances into account, forcing organizations to either adapt their processes to suit themselves or pay huge sums for customization and wait years for updates. For this reason, an HR system needs to be flexible in customization, usually enabled by low-code tools.
Summary
HR process automation helps scale a company and overcome barriers to growth:
- simplifies the management of a complex organizational structure;
- solves the problem of disparate data and tools;
- facilitates mass hiring and adaptation of new employees;
- increases the transparency of the hr department’s work;
- frees hr-specialists from routine to solve strategic tasks.
Implementation of a modern HR platform allows:
- move from tactical management to strategic management;
- improve the quality of data and management decisions based on it;
- increase the maturity of HR processes;
- increase professionalism and engagement of employees.
When choosing a system, it is important to consider the possibilities of deep customization, the availability of tools for quick adaptation of processes and the potential for growth with the company. The right HR automation solution will become a reliable support in business development and its adaptation to changes.
