A large number of human resources agencies and departments rely on outdated, legacy software to manage all recruitment and employee management tasks, from payroll to talent acquisition. In the vast majority of cases, this results in wasted time and money. What ‘s more, companies that rely on disorganized tech stacks are putting themselves at an unnecessary competitive disadvantage.
If you want to find, keep, and fully leverage the best people, you need a modern tech infrastructure. In this post, we’ll look at five essential tools that will help your HR agency or department save resources and optimize everyday essential tasks.
1. Appointment Scheduling Software
Large HR departments usually deal with dozens (if not hundreds) of appointments every single day. It’s a time-consuming and resource-intensive task that involves numerous stages beyond scheduling the initial appointment. These include following up with reminders, re-scheduling, processing cancellations, confirming times with potential recruits or clients, and so on.
When you add up the time dedicated to these tasks, you’re talking about multiple hours per employee per week. That's where automated reminders from an appointment scheduling system comes in. Companies can use this kind of software to handle the majority of tasks related to appointment booking and management.
Source: vcita
Candidates, clients, and fellow employees can access appointment slots via an easy-to-use online portal. They’ll be able to see which times are available and handle any changes or cancellations themselves, without any input from other members of staff. Relevant people will be notified immediately and their schedules will auto-update. Reminders to clients or recruits will also be sent automatically.
2.Human Resources Analytics
Human resources analytics comprises its own distinct field within broader data analytics. Agencies and departments can leverage information from a mix of sources - such as employees, internal process tracking, and recruits and candidates - and use it to help achieve a variety of organizational goals.
HR organizations are usually interested in the following things:
- Reducing employee turnover.
- Finding the best talent.
- Boosting workplace efficiency.
- Implementing effective training and development programs.
- Creating effective incentives and working environments.
HR analytics solutions are built to deliver practical insights in precisely these areas. And while many general HR management apps do come with built-in tracking features, they’re often not powerful enough to deal with large amounts of data in an optimal way. Looking for a dedicated solution, either as a standalone tool or as an addition to your existing app (advanced analytics packages are often offered alongside all-in-one HR solutions), will enable you to make the most of the data which is available to you.
3.Application Tracking System
An application (or “applicant”) tracking system is an app specifically designed to handle various stages of the recruitment process. While early versions of these apps were relatively rudimentary, with the ability to do little more than track resumes, they now have an extensive array of functionality and can dramatically streamline company hiring.
Source: JobScan
Among other things, application tracking systems can be used to post job advertisements to recruitment channels, automatically pass on data to other apps, match CVs with pre-defined skills, track the performance of recruitment strategies, and send follow-up materials (such as a request for an interview) to candidates.
Application tracking systems also act as repositories of candidate information. This can be immensely useful for future hiring, or if your company relies on freelance or contract arrangements for intermittent work. It’s worth thinking about how you can place your application tracking system at the centre of your day-to-day recruitment processes.
4.Document Management Apps
Human resources departments usually have to deal with hefty amounts of paperwork. Document management apps, which allow for partially or even wholly paperless offices, can be used to dramatically speed up a whole host of tasks related to common documents like contracts, payslips, expenses, proposals, and so on.
Features of document management apps include electronic signature fields, templates, automated approval workflows for when texts need to be reviewed by other individuals in a company, and collaboration areas. Having a secure, central location where employees can create and send documents, without the need for printing and hand-signing, will allow you to establish uniform processes across your department or agency and cut down on inefficiency.
It's also worth noting that most of these kinds of management apps come with built-in analytics tools, allowing you to track the status of outbound documents and send reminders or follow-up emails accordingly. Marketing Automation Platforms
5.Marketing Automation Tools
It’s not unusual for human resources agencies and departments to run multiple promotional initiatives at the same time. And this is often a challenge. Paid ad campaigns for generating new recruits and finding the best talent take a lot of time to manage and optimize. Other popular strategies, like college recruitment, posting to job boards, direct outreach via email, and so on, are no less demanding.
Other, newer forms of advertising are even more resource-intensive. Account-based marketing, for example, which is geared towards a single individual or a small group of potential candidates (essentially a “market of one”) is also becoming increasingly common.
Marketing automation tools can help ease the burden of these tasks. They make it possible, for example, to post to multiple job boards at once, auto-optimize ad campaigns, manage a social media presence, schedule email marketing broadcasts, and more. American Sign Letters has implemented these strategies and have seen a huge improvement.
Conclusion
The human resources space is constantly evolving. Departments and agencies that fail to take advantage of new solutions run the risk of getting left behind. A company is only as good as its employees. And finding, keeping, and incentivizing the best people is much easier with the right tools.
