How to Recession-Proof Your HR Ops with Automation

In a recent series of articles, we explored the relationship between automation and recession, and also explained how automation can protect your marketing operations in the probability of such an event.

The idea behind these articles is to provide companies with resources to improve the efficiency of the areas that suffer the most from sudden economic slumps, so they can avoid turning to drastic solutions like layoffs and major budget cuts.

Marketing is one of those areas, and human resources is another one, albeit for very different reasons.

While marketing is obviously impacted by reductions in consumer spending, HR faces a separate set of challenges, often related to:

• Increasing workforce productivity.

• Putting more emphasis on performance reviews.

• Improving key internal processes and communication.

As we showed in a recent piece about interview processes, automation can be the answer to these challenges, and help HR dodge the bitter pill of layoffs.

Today, we’re going to take things a step further, and present you with a series of granular solutions to automate HR processes.

While we trust you’ll get inspired, it is worth noting that the solutions below are readily available, and easy to implement with Make.

How to automate HR processes: Examples and solutions

Core HR processes span from planning, recruitment and onboarding to reviewing performance, managing employee relations and offboarding, among others.

The breadth of tasks and processes HR has to complete is staggering, and developing an automated HR experience makes sense in any context, and even more during a recessive economic period.

Having said that, we’ll share nine solutions that are available as Make templates - that is, pre-built and ready to be deployed in a matter of minutes.

1. Sourcing automation: Post new open positions to your company’s LinkedIn page

Searching for candidates is hard enough without accounting for the time and effort it takes to come up with accurate job descriptions and post them to LinkedIn.

The easy template below saves valuable time by simplifying the process. 

Instead of endless back-and-forths to come up with the right descriptions, you can share an Airtable base across your company, and automatically post the job openings to LinkedIn once they’re ready.

If you’re using an HR suite to manage new openings, you can also automate the process with Make, as shown in the template below.

2. Recruiting automation: Invite the right candidates to an interview

Once you have a list of candidates, you want to spend as much time as possible interviewing them. 

However, HR professionals often have to deal with collateral tasks, such as sending invitations, coordinating interviews, and also rejecting those who haven’t made the pre-selection.

Worse enough, the longer the number of applicants, the longer it takes to complete all of the above. 

Fortunately, this is easy to automate with Make. 

From a list of candidates on an Airtable base, all you have to do is select if a candidate is suitable or not. 

If it is, the template below will send an invitation to the candidate, along with Calendly and Zoom meeting links.

If it isn’t, the candidate will get a rejection email. Simple, polite, and to the point.

3. Hiring automation: Send an offer letter or a rejection email after the interview process is completed

After the round of interviews and tests is done, you’ll want to let the shortlisted candidates know the result. 

The following template can take care of these tasks for you. 

It relies on the same Airtable base mentioned in the previous use case: If a candidate is accepted, Make will send a contract. 

If rejected, the candidate will be notified over email, and added to a Mailchimp list to get notified for future opportunities.

4. Onboarding automation: Provide new hires with credentials, training, and more

The onboarding process is challenging, and involves multiple moving parts: Credentials, product training, culture workshops, onboarding “buddies”, and so on.

Coordinating all of these activities is a huge time sink - so why not automate it with Make?

The template below will allow you to automatically create new employee profiles in your HR suite, request credentials, and set up training sessions with one simple click. 

5. Performance management automation: Gather all the vital information in one place

When a recession creeps in, you want to make sure that your workforce is giving its best.

For companies using time-tracking apps, it can be complicated to go from one profile to another and check reports individually.

Make solves this in a simple way: It ships all the data produced by your time tracking app into a single Notion database, allowing you to evaluate multiple performances at one glance.

6. PTO requests: Capture time-off requests and notify relevant stakeholders

In an ideal world, everyone is responsible for processing PTO requests and letting others know about their availability.

In real life, things can slip off. 

The following Make template adds a layer of reliability to the whole process: It keeps track of PTO requests, and notifies the right people about new requests. 

You can also manage leaves and notifications with Google Calendar and Make in a simple, straightforward manner:

7. Employee relations automation: Capture requests and notify accordingly

Employees want and need to be heard, and not paying attention to what they need has a negative impact on everyone.

To prevent this from happening, you can set up a simple automated workflow where employees can send their requests over a digital form. 

After doing so, Make will automatically notify their manager (or someone else) about the request.

8. Resignations: Book exit interviews to learn more about employees leaving the company

If someone is leaving, you still have to make the best out of that situation: Learning why is the first step to optimizing for the future.

With Make, you can automatically set up exit interviews in one click, and send a Calendly link to the person leaving on the spot.

9. Offboarding automation: Removing access to systems after an employee resigns

After someone leaves, it’s important to secure your systems by removing all access and credentials. 

Traditionally, this task requires you to coordinate with IT and other departments, and keep in touch to make sure the right actions have been taken.

With Make, you can automate this process and save your time for more demanding tasks. 

Just by ticking a field in Airtable, IT will be instructed to remove all access for those who leave the company.

Conclusion: Are traditional HR processes worth the risk?

Can HR be automated? 

Will HR be automated? 

The answer to both questions is “yes”, although the true meaning of this is often misunderstood.

In the context of a potential recession, the decision to automate is a positive one that protects companies and employees from more drastic measures, as traditional processes are more time and resource-intensive.

All you need to do to get started with HR automation is a Make account, and most importantly, the motivation to shield your colleagues from the fallout of a recession as best as you can. 

Once you get into the right mindset, it’ll be a matter of time before you see the benefits automation brings to HR and beyond.