As HR professionals experience increased workloads and have to work longer hours, they are shifting to automation, with a large number of companies already having started automating processes, said Gerhard Hartman at the 2024 HR Indaba.
HR professionals’ worlds changed dramatically when everyone shifted to, and seemingly stayed, working from home, with the volume of work increasing as well as working hours extending, as business leaders wanted to see exactly what was happening with their employees.
This accelerated a shift to automation, with human resources employees needing to capture volumes of data and provide reports on a regular basis.
Gerhard Hartman, regional sales VP mid-market for Africa and Middle East in Sage, addressing attendees at the HR Indaba today, says that the company’s recent research, covering 1,100 HR professionals across several territories, showed that they were under increased pressure.
“Ninety-one percent of HR leaders reported that, in the last few years, they had a huge surge in workload,” he said.
Gerhard added that, “HR professionals need to start adapting and playing a strategic role within your organisation.” He explained that companies first need to know what problem they want to solve, and then go on a journey to find the right technology that can be provided by a software company that can become a partner. “An organisation is not just static,” he said.
Sage, Gerhard said, builds partnerships for life and has had some customers for more than a decade.
As HR has evolved and changed, HR professionals need to have “technology in your organisation that you can access anywhere at any time”. This shift is already happening, with 68 percent of the respondents in the Changing Face of HR survey saying that half of their processes were already automated.
Most of the respondents also expect machine learning and AI to change their roles dramatically in the future. “Don’t be scared to learn something new. Don’t be scared to bring technology into your organisation,” said Gerhard.
However, he cautioned HR professionals to ensure that proper change management is in place, or the system will fail.
Tertia Sykes, head of human resources at Tecmed, a Sage customer, said that before the implementation she was “irritated and stressed. Employees were irritated with me because I had to pull out the HR stick.”
This is because she battled to manage the 180 employees that had to constantly be on call because they supplied medical equipment and did not have time to input aspects such as leave into a spreadsheet.
Keeping track of leave was “almost impossible,” she said. “I had to hear via the grapevine that people were on leave.”
Tertia added that the company tried bringing another system on board, but it didn’t integrate with payroll as anticipated and also didn’t work on an app. This was a drawback as the staff, especially those in technical and sales roles, didn’t have time to input leave on a PC.
Tertia added that since the Sage implementation, “Everything just works. The system can be tailored for you. It’s the truth. I had the right people holding my hand.”
While initially overwhelmed, Tertia made a point of educating herself through the Sage University, and the more she worked on the system, the easier it became and didn’t take as long as she thought. “The system really just came to life,” she said.
Tertia noted that “employees are just happier. They literally had everything in the palm of their hand.” This includes payslips, performance reviews that were automated, IRP5s, and the employee handbook.
At the same time, Tertia said, reporting was made easier as it was automated. She notes that she involved the IT department from the start and ensured that all staff were trained on the system. “Education really is key.”
