With the looming threat of a recession hanging over many organizations, companies everywhere are looking for ways to cut costs and save money. One of the easiest ways to save costs without sacrificing quality is to use automation within your business. People are one of the highest costs that an organization will incur. From compensation to benefits, to other perks, the cost of hiring employees and keeping them on the team long-term is significant. Incorporating HR chatbots into your organization’s strategy can help you cut costs, improve efficiency, and increase overall employee effectiveness.
The HR chatbot technology requires very little from the human resources department at your organization. Oftentimes, chatbot companies will come in and install the software on your behalf. They will oftentimes also provide training for employees, managers, and the human resources team. Consistent support is oftentimes also included in the package. So, you will not have to bring on any extra lift for your technology department, either.
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What Is an HR Chatbot?
You might be asking yourself, what exactly is an HR chatbot? Are they robots? Will they take over HR roles? Well, not exactly.
HR chatbots are automated tools that use artificial intelligence to help field questions and provide solutions via a messaging interface. A chatbot serves as a virtual assistant that takes the place of a human support service. Oftentimes, these chatbots have advanced technology designed to help facilitate a conversation in a human form. Chatbots can exist on a variety of platforms, such as desktop, tablet, and mobile services. Chatbots are specifically designed to help field questions on behalf of the organization that they are linked to. For example, if you are using a training tool, the chatbot will be able to answer questions specifically related to the field of study or competency in which you are seeking training.
The same goes for HR chatbots within organizations. This artificial intelligence is incorporated to help support employees in a fast and more efficient way. By automating conversations with HR chatbots, human resource employees can save time answering easy questions that can be fielded automatically through this technology. However, HR chatbots will not completely replace the human resources department within your organization. It is still important for your HR department to be well-staffed in order to field more advanced and personalized questions. For example, if an employee has a specific legal issue, payroll questions, employee-benefits question, or an individual circumstance that requires immediate attention, it is best to have a human assist with these issues, in order to stay within compliance.
Implementing HR Chatbots
Implementing HR chatbots into your organization is not as difficult as it might sound. HR chatbots are designed to be easily integrated with your current system. So, these HR chatbots will be able to field questions relating to your current HR systems within the organization. The implementation part of this process is the most crucial step! Once you are properly integrated with your HR chatbot system, your employees will be able to access faster, more immediate, and private support.
Your implementation specialist will help you install your HR chatbots so that you can automate support within your organization. Making sure that you have login access to all of the systems within your tech stack, will help this process goes smoothly. This way, you can integrate all of your current systems with your HR chatbot, so that the artificial intelligence is able to help troubleshoot the specific software your organization uses.
Benefits of Using HR Chatbots in Your Organization
There are countless benefits to using an HR chatbot within your organization. Let’s explore just a few!
Streamline Common Questions
One of the main benefits of using an HR chatbot is to streamline common questions. If your organization has a human resources department, customer service department, and IT specialist department, it is likely that each of these sectors are fielding basic questions on a daily basis including questions about HR policies or paperwork. Instead of having these HR professionals spend time on simple problems, give them time back in their day to focus on higher-impact projects. By allowing your HR chatbot to field common questions, your internal teams will be able to tackle projects related to their job description. You will not have to sacrifice the employee experience, as your HR chatbots will typically be able to streamline common questions and help troubleshoot simple issues.
Not only that but installing an HR chatbot within your organization, will allow employees to confidently ask questions. Sometimes, employees can feel embarrassed or shy about asking technology questions, especially if they have little experience with your current software. By integrating an HR chatbot into your organization, employees have a safe space to confidently ask questions, so that they are able to do their best work.
Get Technical IT Support
A lot of smaller organizations do not have a properly built out IT support department until they have at least 250 employees. As a result, IT support typically falls on the human resources department. However, these are individuals who are not experts in the field of technology, or every system that the organization uses. This can be stressful for your Human Resources team, as they may feel as though they do not have the proper support to help employees reach their full potential. Not only that, but they will not have as much time in their day to focus on projects that pertain to the overall health of the organization.
HR chatbots can serve as a solution for this issue. The automated technology within HR chatbots can help provide basic technical support that many employees need, especially when getting started as a new organization. During your onboarding process, you can introduce your HR chatbot to new hires, so that they know they are supported throughout the process of setting up systems. Installing an HR bot is much faster and cheaper than hiring an IT team for your organization or using existing resources for something that can be automated. You can almost think of it as outsourcing your internal knowledge to a chatbot.
Provide Faster Service
For companies that have a large tech stack, fielding questions can be extremely time-consuming. This is especially true if your human resources department is not up to date with all of the current systems that your organization uses. In order to provide the fastest support possible, many companies turn to HR chatbots as an affordable and efficient solution. HR chatbots do not have to do research to solve simple problems that they are programmed to complete. While it might take some human resource specialists time to research the problem and come up with a solution, HR chatbots are already programmed to provide support specifically tailored towards the systems your employees use in the workplace.
Embrace Automation
When running a business, it is important to be as efficient as possible. This is why many companies try to embrace automation whenever they can. This doesn’t mean taking the easy way out, instead, it alludes to you trying to be a leaner and more effective company. Your employees will also appreciate your dedication to automation in terms of speed. By implementing an automated HR chatbot you will be one step ahead of the game when it comes to introducing automated HR processes to your organization, which is the future of work. The more you can automate, the more time you can spend on projects that require a human centered approach.
For example, HR chatbots are often integrated with applicant tracking systems and used in the recruitment or hiring process to evaluate candidates before interviewing them. This way, you are able to simplify the recruitment process for a recruiter and also helps keep the hiring process more consistent. Besides talent acquisition, HR functions that can potentially be automated (or partially automated) include several areas of talent management such as employee development, performance management and workforce planning.
Help Employees Be More Self-Sufficient
By implementing HR chatbots into your organization, you will also be empowering your employees to be more self-sufficient in the workplace and better utilize self-service functionalities in your HR solutions. Oftentimes, employees relied too heavily on their managers and other support departments. The best way for them to learn how to use certain HR software that your organization uses is to troubleshoot them well. This doesn’t mean that they should struggle in silence, which is why HR bots are such a great tool to help ensure they get the support they need without waiting for an email response from their supervisor.
Conclusion
As we saw in this article, streamlining HR management is made possible with new HR technology. Intuitive HR chatbots are a way to make sure employees are better able to use that technology in a way that makes life easier for employees, their supervisors and the HR manager. HR chatbots can be used for anything from recruiting and staffing, to on boarding a new employee and reducing turnover. Workflows can be set up according to business needs. Instead of blaming management software for being too complicated, using an HR bot that integrates seamlessly with your management systems is an innovative HR strategy that provides HR support for your end-to-end employee lifecycle.
We hope this article helped you better understand the benefits of using HR chatbots within your organization. For more helpful content, be sure to check out the rest of our blog!