Why automating recruitment and onboarding is now a strategic imperative for CHROs and HR leaders
Expectations on CHROs and HR Directors have never been higher, and work volumes have never been greater. In a 2024 research survey conducted by payroll software provider Sage, 95% of HR leaders described their role as overwhelming. 91% said their working hours and responsibilities have increased over the last 12 months.
The task HR leaders identified as taking up most of their time was attracting new talent. The challenge is to recruit and nurture a high-performing and motivated workforce that drives growth. But that’s far from easy. We’re operating in a hugely challenging labour market, where competition for talent remains fierce. And we’re under constant pressure to achieve more with less.
That’s why process automation is so valuable. The latest solutions can streamline the administration tasks that take up so much time during recruitment and onboarding. By releasing HR from time-consuming, repetitive tasks, you can concentrate on building organisational success.
In addition, automation helps to deliver a seamless candidate experience from the very first touchpoint.
91% of HR leaders said their working hours and responsibilities have increased over the last 12 months.
What are the key challenges in recruitment and onboarding?
Manual, paper-based working methods soak up time and resources, and offer limited visibility for reporting and review. All too frequently, skilled HR professionals spend time looking for information and managing process steps, rather than taking proactive steps to acquire talent.
For example, manually processing new employees’ onboarding information and documents, and using email to remind recruiters to review them is extremely time-consuming. Productivity and efficiency suffer, leading to long hiring cycles and high recruitment costs. Meanwhile, satisfaction among HR professionals decreases. Slow, inconsistent communications also create a poor experience for candidates and can tarnish your brand reputation. Talented applicants soon lose interest when overstretched HR teams take too long to provide feedback. Similarly, inefficient processes, with HR sending multiple requests for information to new hires, can reduce onboarding success rates and increase employee turnover.
As data protection regulations evolve, relying on physical documents or poorly integrated digital systems increases your risk of non-compliance penalties. The potential impact of a data breach includes huge costs and lasting damage to your corporate name.
Finally, working with paper and email makes it difficult to process applications at scale. Slow manual work will create bottlenecks and hiring delays that hinder organisational growth.
What is the strategic impact of HR automation on recruiting and onboarding?
Automation creates more capacity for value-add work aligned with wider organisational priorities and strategic goals. The latest automation tools can read, categorise, index and store documents, extract key information and automatically populate HR systems. Leading organisations have achieved significant benefits by embedding automation into their recruitment and onboarding processes, including:
1. Driving productivity and efficiency
By spending less time sorting and processing documents such as applications, CVs, and onboarding documents, or sending reminders to the team to take relevant actions; your HR team will have more time to spend on finding the right profile or improving the onboarding experience. With less admin, HR professionals have more time for workforce planning and welcoming new hires. Hiring and onboarding processes will run faster and more smoothly, while HR is better equipped to operate at speed and scale.
2. Optimising costs and reallocating resources
Automation will enable you to achieve more with less – a major plus with tight budgets. Reducing inefficient manual input across recruitment and onboarding will cut hiring and onboarding costs. You can then reallocate resources to areas where they have a stronger impact.
3. Enabling data-driven compliance and security
From a back-office perspective, automation can help to build a more resilient compliance and security strategy. Automated policies for retention and deletion of application and onboarding data can ensure alignment with data privacy regulations – mitigating risk and simplifying audits. A dependable, automated system for managing security means fewer sleepless nights worrying about data loss.
4. Enhancing the candidate and employee experience
Having invested time and energy into your application process, candidates expect quick, responsive feedback and clear guidance on next steps. Automated workflows ensure consistent communications, with event-driven triggers and structured processes. This will provide candidates and new joiners with a more satisfying and engaging experience, while helping to attract the very best talent.
Use HR automation to boost agility and success
Automation releases time for valuable HR work, helping you to recruit top talent, respond dynamically to change and meet the growing expectations of your organisation. As you automate more processes, the positive impact will continue. In short, your HR team can focus their time on being a strategic partner to your business and enhancing the employee experience.
Need support? Ricoh offers a suite of HR automation solutions to streamline your processes, boost efficiency, and empower your HR team. By leveraging our expertise, you can drive your business forward.
Want to learn more about recruitment and onboarding automation?
Download our guide, "The Future of Hiring: Unlock Efficiencies with HR Document Automation", and see real-life results from companies using document automation in HR.
Brian Murray
Chief Human Resources Officer, Ricoh Europe
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