Buying Strategies

Customizing Your HRIS: 6 Tips for Setting Up Employee Workflows

March 15, 2023
Brett Ungashick
Founder

An HRIS is often only as good as the processes that it is set-up to automate. We asked six industry leaders how they've leveraged their HRIS to create time-saving workflows for their business

From auto-approving expense claims to personnel action flows, here are six answers to the question, "What are your highest recommended timesaving automations or workflows that you've built into your HRIS system?"

  • Expense Claim Auto-Approvals
  • New Hire Onboarding Workflow
  • Absence Request Process
  • Position-Tailored Templates for Onboarding
  • Candidate Screening
  • Personnel Action Flows 

Expense Claim Auto-Approvals

One time suck we've been (mostly) able to automate away is approving expense claims. It used to be that every expense claim from an employee had to be manually approved by a manager. It wasn't a big deal when we were a small startup, but as we grew and relied more on reimbursements, it became somewhat burdensome. 

Actually, it became a big time suck. That's when we automated the process in our HRIS by setting criteria to auto-approve certain expense claims. If claims were below a certain dollar threshold and didn't exceed a certain frequency, it would automatically approve them, saving managers valuable time. And even at that, our HRIS provider has adopted AI that uses machine learning to detect possible fraudulent claims. We have had no claims red-flagged yet, but it's nice knowing we have that added layer of protection.

John Ross, CEO, Test Prep Insight

New Hire Onboarding Workflow

At our company, we've developed an automated workflow for daily New Hire Onboarding that has saved us time and resources. The system links to our HRIS database, allowing data from the new hire's application to be quickly matched against existing records. This streamlined process updates employee profiles in a matter of seconds, eliminating the manual entry of information into the system. 

We also have implemented automation for other areas, such as employee performance reviews and goal tracking. In addition to saving time by avoiding tedious manual processes, this automation allows us to get timely access and insight into valuable data that can help inform business decision-making. We believe that automating these HR processes helps streamline operations and improve overall efficiency while providing employees with the best experience possible.

Maria Harutyunyan, Co-Founder, Loopex Digital

Absence Request Process

We have created a workflow within our HRIS system that automatically emails managers whenever an employee submits a request for a leave of absence. This allows managers to quickly respond to the request and ensure that they took all necessary steps to approve the leave. 

Additionally, the email notification prompts managers to make sure they follow up with employees after they return from leave to ensure they can successfully reintegrate into the workplace. We found that this workflow helped to streamline the leave approval process and ensure that employees were provided with the necessary support.

Luciano Colos, Founder and CEO, PitchGrade

Position-Tailored Templates for Onboarding

One example is using a system's automated workflows for employee onboarding tasks, such as organizing career history documentation or setting up required payroll documentation. These tools allow administrators to easily create multiple templates for various types of employees, which can then be filled out quickly based on an individual employee profile before being passed through to other systems for processing. 

This saves time over manually filling out each form individually, and it allows departments to spend more on training or further HR initiatives instead.

Grace He, People and Culture Director, TeamBuilding

Candidate Screening

The time-consuming part of any hiring process is evaluating resumes because there can be dozens or even hundreds of them. Using basic keywords and uploading filters, we can quickly find the most relevant CVs from our preferred task structures using HR planning automation tools.

Dayna Carlin, Director of Marketing and Sales, NovoPath

Personnel Action Flows 

We developed Personnel Action flows within our HRIS system for new hires, salary-change approvals, and termination approvals. Along with these flows, we set up notifications for upcoming and overdue employee performance evaluation reviews. Both allowed us to save time and work more efficiently within our HRIS system.

Matthew Wright, Partner, Surety Systems, Inc.

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Brett Ungashick
Founder
Brett is the founder of OutSail. He spent the early part of his career selling HR software before switching sides and going to work for the people buying the software.

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