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Work Smarter, Not Harder: How to Scale Your HR Department with Ease

Updated: October 12, 2023 5 Min Read

When a business scales, the goal is to grow the company’s revenue faster than its expenses. Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. All too often, poor strategy can have serious consequences. The typical reaction when a company is trying to expand is often either to hire lots of people or to tighten the belt and under-resource teams in an attempt to save money. Without a careful evaluation of needs and options, both these choices can turn out to be a mistake.

Whether you are an HR professional at an expanding startup or even a well-established business, you know all too well the critical role you play in whether its continued growth fails or succeeds. Ensuring your HR department scales with the company is essential, but expansion is often so rapid that it’s challenging to get the right resources and infrastructure in place. So how can you successfully scale your HR department in tandem with the whole company, and help to ensure its success?

First, the good news: you may not have to choose between keeping to a budget and equipping your team with enough resources. Before hiring more staff, take stock of what you already have and consider how to improve it most efficiently. The unfortunate truth is that under-staffed teams are doomed to flounder, but not every resource issue is a staffing issue. Instead, what if you could free up your existing people to do more impactful work while automating necessary, but repetitive, processes? Doing so can increase the value of your team’s work, without infrastructure bloat and with lower upfront costs. Let’s consider what this solution might look like.

 

HR Automation for Reliable Scaling

When it comes down to it, the core issue is administrative work. It’s inevitable, yet it’s also in tension with an HR department’s core function: enhancing the human relationships at the center of the company’s functioning. Oftentimes, administrative tasks like paperwork typically bloat the team’s workflow, which makes it much harder to stay focused on people. But when a company grows, so does paperwork. What’s the solution?

Well, this is where HR automation shines. When trying to balance paperwork with people, consider the parts of your team’s workload that are repetitive: reminders, scheduled emails, paperwork and task assignments, report generation, and so on. If you can automate the bulk of these tasks, your existing personnel is freed for people-oriented work.

 

How Automation Improves HR Processes

Picture this scenario. Currently, someone on your team is using afternoons to revise spreadsheets and send out forms. Another is tasked with compliance nuts and bolts, like keeping up with which candidates have responded to offer emails and revising their paperwork. Meanwhile, you are trying to schedule growing recruitment and job interviews, and your team is stretched thin by the time they speak to an actual candidate face-to-face.

A team using an HR automation tool would be free from most of these tasks. They could focus on the afternoon’s slate of job interviews or candidate screenings, knowing that conditional logic would trigger their platform to send out the right paperwork at the right time for signature and review. If a candidate didn’t respond in time, they would be confident that a reminder would be triggered. They’d also trust that sensitive information was automatically handled in compliance with the law and company policies. 

With lower stress and more time, they could address the human issues that arose much more effectively.

 

Preparing HR to Scale Your Workforce

Ultimately, as a department, you are seeking not only to support your team as it scales but the entire company. For that, you need resources that help you address the tension between bringing on new personnel as resources, and the paperwork load that hiring and onboarding creates. 

Automation helps to break this feedback loop by streamlining the paperwork process related to onboarding or finding new talent. No matter how many people are being hired, the tool’s conditional logic works the same way and doesn’t get overwhelmed the way humans do. This, in turn, helps your team avoid burnout and work more effectively to support the company as it scales.

HR can use workflow automation to streamline tasks such as:

  • Onboarding and training
  • New hire checklists
  • Compliance verification
  • Application and new hire paperwork
  • Timesheet, PTO, and pay management
  • Data analytics

As paperwork becomes less of a burden, HR has more time for what is popularly being called people operations—that part of the job that focuses on nurturing a healthy company culture with consistent values. Often neglected during major expansions, healthy culture is vital to long-standing company success, engaged teams, and low turnover.

 

Automating for More Human-Centered Teams

Many HR professionals see clearly how their department would benefit from workflow automation, but hesitate when it comes to approaching key decision-makers in the company. If that’s you, here are some tips on justifying the solution to leadership.

Automation can free HR personnel to focus on the human side of the job, better supporting the company as it scales. By relying on technology to automate administrative tasks, more gets done and your team is happier. What’s better, these intelligent platforms scale beautifully. Since solutions like Docubee are infinitely customizable, they work just as well for a 5,000-employee company as they do for a 50-person startup.

As your department begins using automation, you may find you need fewer new hires than expected. Those new team members that are brought on will be free to contribute more value to the company, and with streamlined paperwork, you can grow confidently without fear of administrative overload.

An added bonus is that automation may also reduce turnover: employees tend to be more satisfied and engaged as their work becomes more impactful. As the company scales, compliance also remains reliable. Tasks are less likely to fall through the cracks as reminders and security features are seamlessly integrated. Don’t you think it’s about time to cut out wasted time?

Schedule a demo to learn more about Docubee’s HR workflow automation solutions. We look forward to meeting you!