In a December 2023 updated report, Ernst & Young (EY) found the average cost per manual data entry made by an HR professional increased to $4.78. Read about EY’s latest findings for more information.
I’ve had the opportunity to help guide a company at the forefront of digital transformation. But today, we’re past just transforming — we’re standing in the digital reality.
As the chief operating officer of an industry-leading tech company, I can assure you having the right tools for your workforce is more than just a good idea. For an enterprise, or even a business approaching that level, you can’t stay ahead in this job market without reliable HR and payroll software. When I was a teenager, I learned it’s possible to build a house by hand. But for a whole neighborhood, you need actual construction equipment.
Before the digital reality, companies might have “made do” with manual processes. But to succeed, you need to make progress.
And the right HR tech can help you do it. I’ve got four ways how.
Boosting compliance
As your enterprise grows, your liability can, too.
That doesn’t have to be a side effect of your success. I’ve been part of a movement to put HR data where it belongs — in employees’ hands. With each step forward, we’ve added an extra layer of protection against compliance vulnerability in areas like benefits enrollment, time sheets and paid time-off requests. By giving employees more insight into their paychecks, we’ve taken a leap.
When your workers have the ability to access, troubleshoot and approve their own paychecks, you get additional oversight from the people who know their pay best. When you’ve got hundreds to thousands of employees, the chance for your managers to overlook expense reimbursement or missed punches could be high. When your employees can see their paycheck before it hits their account, it’s like installing an extra support beam in a home’s foundation. This one piece makes the whole structure stronger.
Outside regular HR functions, new laws and legislation reshape the compliance landscape. An HR compliance tool that helps keep you aware of these changes allows your enterprise to be proactive and pivot in the face of new regulations.
Increasing engagement
Empowering your employees with HR tech isn’t just convenient — it’s cost-effective. Ernst & Young recently revised the estimated price of the average manual HR task to $4.70. That might seem like a drop in the bucket for an enterprise, but across thousands of workers, each with dozens of interactions with HR each week, it adds up quickly.
Powerful HR tech automates these processes and maximizes your ROI. And the best option proves this impact by letting you see where employee usage affects your enterprise the most as well as where it helps you improve.
And we’ve seen the real-world results of what streamlined tech does for HR teams nationwide. For example, we worked closely with one restaurant chain that shaved 90 minutes off its onboarding time with our support. When your HR professionals spend less time on the routine tasks, they have more time to serve as valuable, strategic partners to your business.
Leveraging accuracy and security
The best football team is only as good as its defense, and a business’s success isn’t certain without the right security measures. This doesn’t have to come at the cost of efficiency either.
In fact, by expediting the everyday tasks, HR is able to focus on efforts like improving your enterprise’s security. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, “efficiency” isn’t measured by speed, but “reaching the best outcomes” overall. When employees are spread thin across multiple systems that make up their at-work life, they get held back by multiple logins — imagine if a football team had completely separate training facilities for blocking, running, passing, kicking and strategy. And each of those unique passwords they have to remember don’t just waste time; each one also creates its own security risk.
The most effective HR tech will keep all of your HR processes in one convenient location. And like a championship team’s huddle, all sensitive information is communicated within one system, not through separate emails and texts. This helps ensure a seamless flow of data, so your workforce spends less time guarding and reentering information to access the tools they need.
Meeting expectations
It’s a fact — great businesses outlast the people who made them. New generations of workers cycle through every role you offer and likely fill those you’ll eventually create. And that’s great; fresh minds bring new, big ideas.
But to attract the top talent for your present and future needs, you have to offer an experience that matches the ease young candidates expect. Harvard Business Review recently predicted that millennials will make up 75% of the working class by 2030. I’m not the only member of a C-suite that’s taking notice. In a 2021 study from Mercer, an asset management company, half of the executives they interviewed felt they must deliver a consumer-grade experience to their employees, but only 4% of HR professionals felt they have the tools to deliver it.
We’re in the digital reality. Not just young adults. Not just tech-savvy workers. Everybody. We’re past the point of filing cabinets and desks covered in paperwork. In fact, we helped one agricultural co-op eliminate the need for hard copies of basic HR documents. And in doing so, it delivered the employee experience its workforce expects.
But there’s still a lot of work to do. Over the past three years of Mercer’s study, only two out of every five businesses say they’re even “mostly digital.” But this isn’t enough now, and it definitely won’t be enough tomorrow.
It’s a beautiful thing when people, processes and technology come together. I’ve seen it in action every day for the past seven years, and I can tell you it’s critical for success.
Don’t just take my word for it. See it yourself. From Direct Data Exchange®, our powerful employee usage reporting and analytics tools, to Beti®, our awarding-winning payroll experience, Paycom’s single software has the tools you need take your enterprise even further. Find out how today.
DISCLAIMER: The information provided herein does not constitute the provision of legal advice, tax advice, accounting services or professional consulting of any kind. The information provided herein should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional legal, tax, accounting or other professional advisers. Before making any decision or taking any action, you should consult a professional adviser who has been provided with all pertinent facts relevant to your particular situation and for your particular state(s) of operation.