HR teams that automate workflows improve data security and efficiency

When well executed, HR information management streamlines repetitive and laborious tasks while providing secure access to current, reliable data for valuable insights. HR pros gain back time for high-value work, such as strategizing and decision-making. They can also do a better job of managing personnel by building efficient, often automated workflows that serve employees quickly and generate analytics required by upper management.

Recent research indicates that companies that believe they do a strong job of HR information management tend to be more automated in their processes.

What separates leaders from laggards

A study by the HR Research Institute, sponsored by Iron Mountain, indicated that HR professionals who gave their information management effectiveness a score of 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale (“leaders”) had introduced significantly more automation into their workflows than those with a 1, 2, or 3 ranking (“laggards”). The study, The State of HR Information Management, surveyed 256 cross-industry HR professionals in various-sized companies worldwide but with a concentration in North America, especially the United States. Nearly 40% worked for companies with 1,000 or more employees.

Just over half (52%) gave themselves a 4 or a 5 ranking, and they were almost four times as likely as those in the laggard category to say information management in their organizations was mostly or completely automated. The results signify broad potential for HR data lifecycle and workflow improvements among those organizations with largely manual operations.

Leaders were also far more likely to consistently dispose of sensitive employee information no longer required by law: 68% of leaders reported having a retention and disposal policy versus 42% of laggards. Such policy gaps, particularly when combined with loose or nonexistent auditing procedures, open up organizations to risky data leakage and data integrity erosion. More than a fifth (22%) of respondents said that they don’t audit their HR information at all.

Battling complexity

The stats may seem surprising, but they’re understandable given the complexity that today’s HR information management professionals face. The function entails collecting, classifying, storing, securing, and sharing employee and other work-related data, as well as responding to information requests and managing data archiving and disposal.

Because a company’s HR data can provide valuable insight that supports critical day-to-day workflows and HR decisions, it needs to be managed in a way that makes it quickly and easily accessible to the authorized personnel who need it. At the same time, however, HR data also must be kept secure and compliant with applicable corporate, industry, and government privacy policies and regulations.

At the scale and volume of today’s data deluge, balancing all these aspects of information management can be a tall order. In a perfect world, for example, HR teams would continually stay current with regulations, audit data for compliance, and adjust the treatment of data accordingly. Keeping all the HR data plates spinning is particularly challenging if the organization is large or growing and relies mostly on manual processes.

Technology expectations

Nearly all professionals surveyed (98%) agreed that there were advantages to using technology to manage their information. Imaging, workflow automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and analytics are among the key capabilities that allow HR departments to automate certain tasks and speed completion times. The technology also helps them stay current with the status of employee situations and compliance regulation, often without having to involve their company’s information technology (IT) department.

For example, HR organizations can use document imaging technology or services to digitize data and files. Workflow automation platforms allow them to centralize and secure data with unified portals, comprehensive visibility, and data encryption. HR teams can also deploy AI for data-driven analytics and insights for use by the HR department and upper management. Currently, just over a quarter of organizations (27%) surveyed by the HR Institute said they were using AI, a percentage they expect to more than double during the next 18 months to 58%.

The benefits of technology-assisted HR data management that survey respondents mentioned most often were saving time (77%) and improvements in the protection of employee information (74%). When it came to their desired outcomes, information security was the biggest, cited by 78% of respondents. This goal is reasonable, given the massive amounts of sensitive employee data that HR must create, store, and protect. The data can include personally identifiable information (PII), such as social security numbers, birthdates, and contact details, as well as confidential employee performance reviews, formal complaints, and background screening data.

Data integrity was the second most hoped-for outcome, mentioned by 74% of survey respondents. This function involves maintaining data accuracy and consistency for the duration of its life cycle so that decision-making is always based on current and “good” data. Data integrity is essential to being able to trust data-driven decisions and eliminate guesswork.

Barriers to success

While HR professionals’ information management priorities are clear, manual processes still dominate and may be holding many of them back. More than half of the organizations in the HR Institute study reported that none of their information management processes had been mostly or completely automated. In other words, while they might have automated some data-related tasks, the majority of companies surveyed hadn’t fully (or even largely) automated all aspects of any single HR business or data management process.

Similarly, while organizations reported using multiple means of storing employee records, the most popular method was still paper, used by more than two-thirds (67%) of respondent companies. And nearly half (48%) of large organizations with 1,000 or more employees said they spend more than 20 hours per week on manual administrative tasks.

Manual workflow processes tend to create bottlenecks and delays that often cause HR employees to use shortcuts or workarounds to get their jobs done but could put the company at risk for noncompliance and data loss. A lack of overall visibility into the HR information and workflow processes makes it difficult to stay current with outstanding tasks and to proactively track, manage, and report quantitative insights to senior management.

Budget is the most common barrier to using technology assistance to improve HR information management, according to 51% of the respondent organizations. There’s a bit of a domino effect going on in this regard. Laggards in the study were twice as likely to lack support from leadership, which, in turn, creates budget shortfalls that lead to outdated technology. One best practice for companies in this situation, then, is to identify a champion to build the business case to upper management for tech-assisted HR data management improvements, the study suggests. Such a liaison can keep those in charge of the corporate budget informed about the capabilities and ROI of deploying certain technologies so that departmental funding doesn’t get passed over simply because of a lack of awareness.

How automation helps

HR workflow automation, often available as a cloud service that requires no IT capital investment, can help companies streamline onboarding new employees, comply with policies and regulations, and manage employee relations and associated risk. Such systems and services allow HR users to define processes that others need to follow and automate both the routing of documents to those who need to act on them and escalation notices of any process delays.

Centralized employee data repositories with a unified management portal and dashboard allow HR pros to access all employee-related data—integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and human resources information systems (HRIS)— from a common interface. Such systems, for example, may create an automatic audit trail with documentation that tracks changes and activities that have been performed on folders and files, such as viewing and printing to ease compliance and data management.

Automated, centralized systems can also deliver new-hire information packets to employee self-serve online portals, which employees can use to complete and submit the required documentation. They allow HR personnel to access employee relations issues and gain visibility into the status of cases to monitor progress, track resolution times, resolve bottlenecks, and report to senior management or the legal department, as needed.

Because 78% rated information security as important to their HR departments, it’s important to note that some automated HR workflow systems encrypt data both at rest and during transmission across a secure network. In the unlikely event that documents are accessed by an unauthorized person, then, the data is not viewable, and the organization avoids a breach.

Iron Mountain can help address these challenges. Iron Mountain^® Digital HR solution simplifies your highly complex HR ecosystem so you can access, manage and govern physical and digital content in a unified, automated and secure platform. Digital HR is built on Iron Mountain InSight^® Digital Experience Platform (DXP), a scalable, low-code software as a service (SaaS) solution that strengthens the information management capabilities lacking or missing in your existing HR ecosystem via pre-built connectors, workflows, document types, metadata, retention rules, and AI prompts.

Interested in learning more about Digital HR? Contact us today for a free discovery and demo session.