New Airslate Survey Discovers Automation Is Now Considered “Vital” to 94% Of HR Professionals

By HRTech News Desk Last updated Sep 14, 2023

A new study from airSlate, a leader in document workflow automation solutions, highlights the central role of automation in keeping HR teams at small and medium sized organizations agile, responsive and ahead of the curve. The report titled Automation: The Key to Driving HR Organizations Forward, underscores +the role of automation in contributing to the efficiency and ultimate success of small and medium size businesses.

The data from airSlate’s survey overwhelmingly show how the role of today’s HR managers and directors has grown in recent years. As workplace trends and world events continue to shape today’s business environments, HR professionals are doing more than just payroll, hiring, and benefits. Their roles are essential and impact larger business objectives and goals including employee engagement, communication, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), corporate social responsibility (CSR), and more. For HR leaders to excel in today’s rapidly changing workforce, automation investment is needed for traditional, manual tasks, to enable higher-level contributions from teams to increase productivity, and ultimately revenue.

“Human resources professionals are tasked, and challenged, with the critical role they play in shaping the success of an organization. With the workforce continuing to trend towards rapid adoption of technology, there is incredible opportunity for HR teams to modernize their processes and embrace automation,” said Shawn Herring, CMO at airSlate. “Automation of manual tasks will empower HR professionals to refocus their time and energy on more productive, effective operations that grow the business and yield happier workforces.”

Key findings from the report:

Greater investment opportunities in automation are on the horizon for HR professionals: The report estimates that by 2024, 75% of HR teams will increase their investment in workflow automation technologies by 2x. This sentiment is endorsed by HR managers and directors across a wide range of industries, including financial services, insurance, construction, manufacturing, retail, health technology, education, marketing, and more.
There’s an incredible opportunity to automate manual tasks and empower HR teams to refocus their time and energy on more productive operations that generate more revenue: 70% of team members in HR departments stated they spend 5-12 hours per week on manual paperwork – equaling an entire workday a week spent on manual paperwork. Furthermore, 95% of HR professionals reported an increase in team’s efficiency and a positive impact on how their teams work when incorporating automation into their job function.
Talent acquisition is the most popular automated process among HR teams: The data reveals that hiring talent is where automation is currently used the most (50%) and where teams plan to adopt automation the most in the next year (44%).
HR teams will broaden automation capabilities to new areas: HR teams currently rely on automation for activities including new hire paperwork (50%) and workforce management operations like turnover analysis, industry trends, etc. (47%). Looking to the year ahead, internal employee communications (41%), benefits enrollment (38%), and performance reviews (39%) are of top priority and interest to HR teams looking to broaden automation capabilities.

Adoption challenges need to be addressed: Although 36% of respondents see no roadblocks to adopting document workflow automation in their HR departments, there are adoption issues that can’t be overlooked. Respondents noted limitations of technology in addressing required needs (28%), budgetary constraints (24%), integration issues (24%), insufficient resources for deployment/driving the adoption (18%), and lack of prioritization from leadership (12%) as the biggest challenges in their automation and digital transformation journeys.

airSlate recognizes the opportunity for HR teams to benefit from automation to build more efficient, productive organizations, and seeks to empower these teams to realize the role of automation in building the workforce of tomorrow. During the pandemic, Claremont Graduate University (CGU) embarked on a project to automate more of its HR workflows. airSlate helped CGU streamline and process over 500 weekly requests from students, faculty, or staff members to visit the university campus. airSlate also helped CGU automate the time-consuming task of adjunct contracting processes, which requires different types of adjuncts already employed or hired by the university.

“Our HR team saw immediate upticks in productivity and efficiency once we incorporated HR workflows and automation,” said Eric Werner, academic affairs analyst at Claremont Graduate University. “With airSlate, the elimination of redundant paperwork has allowed our staff to focus their time on more high-priority tasks that make our team, and the university, incredibly more self-sufficient and successful.”

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