If there’s anything that anyone enjoys, it’s saving money. I’ll put it into perspective for you. When you walk into your favourite store, to find the item you’re looking for has a ‘clearance’ or ‘reduced’ tag, you raise your eyebrows, smile a bit and shine up so bright you could light a room. While that’s all happening, you might even say something along the lines of “Awesome, what a bargain!”
If anything, I’m pretty sure there are people out there who seek to save before they even attempt to enter the store. Saving is in fact something that all corporations aim to go after. It’s embedded in every annual goal or objective set out for the company. You’ll recognise it with senior management insisting the company as a whole should “cut back costs and expenses”.
With our previous discussion on How HR Can Adapt to New Technology, we figured that times have changed and so has the advancement of technology. What this change in technology means is that it’s made way for costs to be reduced and savings to occur. With only brushing up on it briefly, I wanted to delve deeper into what these specific savings were for HR in particular right now.
Why HR?
Because it’s the centre of attention of this technological change – for the business world at least. (And to be quite frank with you, this is a HR blog)
How are HR savings made with HR Software?
#1. Quick employee management
With incentives and rewards being pivotal to employee engagement, we know that reimbursements for travel or education is a way of providing these incentives. With the time, money, effort and confusion in handling each employee’s input of how much they travel per day or what materials they need for further education – it’s all complex with the records. Now that technology is available, it’ll allow employees to easily manage all that with HR systems and programs made specifically for these functions. Not only can it now be personally manageable, but we all know technology will help reduce any unnecessary steps in the process of doing so whilst keeping everything stored neatly. It’s all part of technology’s ability in streamlining processes and making things easier.
#2. Alignment of Resources & Productivity Levels Boosts
This is a no brainer. Despite the importance of strategy within the function, HR management remains heavily routine based. That’s where HR software comes in by automating these transactional tasks. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should then proceed to lay off the employees who were doing these tasks. This automation means you can redirect these employees into different areas that need strategic focus and human skills – essentially building a demanding area. (You’ll also be further engaging your employees, building their skill set!). This is only one area of a HR solution, another saving is allowing information to be accessed whenever and wherever. In today’s modern society – every business is an international business. You can now access the information you need from any time zone.
#3. Minimising other cost inefficiencies
Once we identify and reduce the costs that’s been draining the organisation, we can look to other aspects that require attention. Recruitment is a big one, it’s where the process was done manually where the prospective employee physically hands in their resume. With the support of a HR software, it can all be pre-filled and stored accordingly. It’ll give businesses a hand at screening quickly too – with automated emails and quick reference checks. Looking at these areas of inefficiencies is just another way of adding to the list of savings.
#4. Improvement of the organisation’s structure
HR as we know it is what embodies the whole organisation together. It’s what keeps the entire company running with the work that’s produced and support that’s provided. If this area of the business is intact, we know that the organisation as a whole will be intact. With technology enabling a cost-effective management of human resources, this creates a chain reaction that will strengthen the organisation. Let’s put it into perspective: Having technology effectively and efficiently help recruit the right candidates will put the company in a position to have the right skill set. This skill set will generate the right work and build the organisation enough for growth through shareholder interest. It’s a win-win situation.
As we can gather from what’s been discussed above, we can see that it’s all about savings. These savings in fact, are a starting point to help an organisation access growth and development. If it wasn’t for technology allowing for all this productivity gain to happen – I’m not too sure how companies would differentiate themselves by creating a competitive advantage.
The HR tech toolkit has well evolved since its inception and has become specialised to better serve its purpose. From basic technology such as computers, printers, scanners and various other machines and all the way to today’s smart HR systems. Each of these basic forms of technology, whilst overlooked as beneficial for organisations today, have contributed to improving human productivity over time. If you have a look carefully, if it wasn’t for the making of the first computer, how could you be simply working today? So think carefully, without SaaS HR, how can your organisation cut costs, be efficient…and save?