The recent switch to a predominantly home-based workforce has presented many challenges for organisations. With many businesses and their HR and IT teams tasked with ensuring that employees can access the information and support that they need wherever they are.
This has, however, revealed the limitations of some existing systems, and has resulted in additional pressure and workload for HR Teams who are already handling increasing queries related to the normal operations of a company but also around COVID-19.
The Challenge
In the physical office environment of a couple of years, ago many of these questions or concerns could be discussed in person across desks, significantly reducing the number of emails, telephone calls, and messages received by HR Teams.
Processing this plethora of employee communications is not only time-consuming for HR but is also extremely repetitive and can sometimes lead to delays in employee responses.
Empowering People with Technology
Due to the fact that a high percentage of these questions or tasks are similar, they are a prime candidate for automation technologies such as RPA and Conversational AI.
Humley has found through speaking with HR leaders from leading organisations, that many of the queries received daily relate to similar topics. For example, finding out annual leave allowance and booking a holiday or updating personal details. Due to the fact that a high percentage of these questions or tasks are similar, they are a prime candidate for automation technologies such as RPA and Conversational AI.
Through utilising Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, Conversational AI Assistants can understand the meaning and intent of human language. This makes them the perfect tool for streamlining live employee interactions and meaning they can respond and provide relevant and personalised responses to employees in seconds.
Crucially, where Conversational AI Assistants such as Humley’s Digital HR Assistant differ from typical chatbots, is through their ability to automatically ingest documents such as employee handbooks (where much of the information requested is located) and through integrations with internal systems (HRIS, payroll, L&D, etc.)
These two key differences mean that the assistant can retrieve far more detailed and relevant information, essentially providing employees with the ability to self-serve and meaning that they are no longer reliant on sending emails to HR and can access what they need on-demand and in the channels they use.
Furthermore, the integration of business systems and RPA technologies means that employees cannot only request information but can also perform tasks – enhancing their ability to self-serve and further delivering time savings to HR Teams.
The manufacturer was able to significantly improve the employee experience through providing immediate action to their request but also enabled the HR Team to achieve a 30% efficiency gain, freeing them up to focus on more strategic and higher-value tasks.
For example, through combining UiPath’s bots in combination with Humley’s Conversational Assistants, a global manufacturing company was able to streamline the processing of employee ravel booking requests in real-time. This significantly improved employee experiences and generated time savings for the HR Team by reducing the amount of repetitive manual data entry previously required.
The Assistant guides employees through a series of questions to complete forms or make travel bookings – converting the unstructured human responses into structured machine-readable data for upload into business systems by RPA bots and triggering further actions such as automated approvals emails. This meant that the manufacturer was able to significantly improve the employee experience through providing immediate action to their request but also enabled the HR Team to achieve a 30% efficiency gain, freeing them up to focus on more strategic and higher-value tasks.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, through empowering employees to self-serve with Conversational Assistants organisations can deliver an improved experience with on-demand information. Which will lead to greater awareness of company policies and processes, but also improved productivity and ‘buy into’ an organisation’s culture and mission through enhanced communications and greater visibility of information.
Crucially, through freeing up HR Teams from these repetitive requests they can focus on areas that require a human touch – building relationships, dealing with sensitive issues, and planning for the future – helping to create amazing employee experiences and delivering value to an organisation.
If you would like to find out more about how Conversational AI Assistants can deliver efficiencies to your HR Team and employees, get in touch today.