Workers are eager to delegate repetitive tasks to robots, according to a 2018 survey, but HR technology is already sophisticated enough to shoulder much of HR’s admin burden

According to a 2018 report by ABBYY, nearly two-thirds (63%) of UK employees would outsource some of their tasks to robots if the option was available.

Fortunately for HR, many of the tasks that made workers’ list of their top 10 most hated tasks can already be automated to some degree by specialist HR technology.  

HR-relevant tasks that workers said they love to hate included manual data entry (cited by 10% of respondents), tracking hours and time (10%), processing documents such as payroll (9%), booking time off (9%), and reporting (9%).

Tasks that workers said they most wanted to delegate to robots included manual data entry (16%), tracking hours and time (11%), and processing documents such as payroll (11%).

HR professionals are fortunate that there is a whole host of brilliant technology solutions on the market to help them make like work of such disliked tasks – without needing to wait for the much-vaunted ‘rise of the robots’. Here are three tasks that more sophisticated use of technology can help to eradicate.

1. Manual data entry

Most people find the prospect of manual data entry quite demoralising. It’s a tedious chore for HR teams, line managers, and employees alike – especially if they have to enter the same sets of data manually in multiple systems. And, not only is it dull, this repetition increases the likelihood of errors occurring (we’re only human, after all).

Linking your core HR systems with other key business applications – such as an applicant tracking system (ATS), time and attendance system, benefits platform and payroll system – removes the need to enter data manually in each of those separate systems, potentially saving HR teams huge amounts of time that would be better spent on more strategic work. In fact, more than a third (38%) of senior HR professionals surveyed by HR software provider CIPHR earlier this year said their teams spend up to 10 hours a month updating and transferring data between HR solutions: that’s around 15 working days per year lost to data updating.

2. Tracking hours and time worked

Introducing specialist time and attendance software – and linking it to a core people management system – will also help HR teams tackle another of workers’ pet peeves: tracking their hours and time. CIPHR’s survey suggested there’s already an appetite among HR professionals for linked HR and time and attendance systems; nearly a fifth (19%) of those surveyed said their organisations already integrate, or would like to integrate, these two types of software.

3. Payroll

The third key task that employees love to hate which HR software can help to automate is payroll processing. The concept of integrating payroll software with a core HR system is nothing new, but, until recently, a degree of manual intervention was still required; often, the ‘integration’ required HR teams to download employee information, and securely send it to their payroll provider. The development of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), which facilitate seamless links between applications, means payroll solutions and core HR software can now be truly linked, with changes in the HR system – such as to employee pay, or bank details – automatically reflected in the payroll software. Choosing to link systems by API makes the storage and processing of data faster, more secure, and more accurate – which can be a great boon for busy HR teams.

So there’s no need to wait for a robo-colleague to make its appearance in your office to jettison some of your dullest, lowest-value tasks; technology has come such a long way already that it can really lighten your load if you truly embrace it.