With responsibility for recruitment, benefits, health and safety and more, HR teams have a lot to juggle. And they often find themselves doing it using different systems for different functions.

Only 17% of organisations have a strategy for integrating HR applications according to Sierra-Cedar's 2017-18 HR Systems Survey.

So how to make things run more smoothly? One solution is using automation tools that integrate with the applications that you already use. Here's how using Workplace can streamline these eight HR tasks.

1. Onboarding

Immersing new starters into your organisation and workplace culture can be time-consuming. With Workplace, you can cut out a lot of the paperwork by sharing orientation information using Workplace groups.

Once your hires are in the group, pinned posts will signpost people to the really important information that they need to get up to speed.

By pinning threads to the top of their inbox, people can now easily dip in and out of conversations without losing context.

It will also minimise the time they spend searching their contacts – speeding up decision-making and making new and old members of staff more productive.

Using Workplace can also help you start the onboarding process early. At Larsen & Toubro Infotech, students are onboarded into a multi-company group so they can find out more about the company and ask other employees what it's like to work there. This sustains their engagement up to their start date.

Using Workplace can help sustain new starters' engagement up to and beyond their start date

And bots such as Libby can also help new starters get up and running. Automated bots can answer all of the repetitive questions people ask all of the time such as the Wi-Fi password or the printer number – so your new hires can get on with the important stuff.

2. Mentoring schemes

Facilitating workplace mentoring shows you care about nurturing new hires. And longer-serving employees can also benefit from someone senior who they respect, sharing ideas and teaching them new tasks.

Mentoring can work just as well online as face to face. You can set up private groups in Workplace to provide a secure space for mentors and mentees to build relationships.

And the Cortado integration with Workplace makes things even simpler by matching coworkers together based on their career interests and goals.

3. Company news and policy update announcements

Company intranet not working for you, with little take-up of content? News Feed makes sure that people see and engage with your key announcements and business updates. It also enables your HR teams to garner real-time feedback on how staff feel about the direction of travel.

It's also convenient for employees out in the field as they can use the mobile app to read company news and updates on the go.

4. Monitoring engagement levels

Workplace can provide valuable insights into staff engagement that email simply can't. Dashboard analytics can be used to monitor group activity which, in turn, reflects overall company-wide engagement.

These tools enable you to more consistently take the pulse of your organisation

You can also carry out quick surveys by building your own mood bots to survey staff sentiment or create a poll in a group. You can also make use of easy integrations with applications such as Survey Monkey so you can more consistently take the pulse of your organisation.

5. Testing out new ideas

Workplace Chat is ideal for asking for instant feedback from your employees. You can solicit responses about everything from new benefit initiatives you're thinking of implementing to what sort of work social events they prefer.

You'll find that once you begin a thread, people will feed off each other's comments and discussions will evolve to provide you with even more worthwhile insights.

6. Tracking employee safety

If there's been an emergency and you need to account for everyone's safety, it can often be difficult making contact with people quickly. Safety Officer changes that.

It allows you to send alerts to Workplace groups so that employees can respond quickly with one click to share their status, tell you they're safe or that they need assistance.

It's also a useful tool for fire drills in large companies that need to account for hundreds of people in the same location. You can register for early access to Safety Check here.

7. Dealing with leave requests

Managing all of the holiday requests that come their way can be a challenge for HR teams.

Workplace integrations with the likes of Kronos can make booking time off much simpler for employees and reduces the admin burden on your HR team. Using a virtual assistant bot, managers can review, approve or decline time-off requests and make a painful process simple.

8. Answering questions about pay

Much of the HR department's time can be spent answering questions about payroll issues. So why not automate it? Automation tools can vastly reduce the number of emails and phone calls your HR professional deal with. Take the ADP Virtual assistant, for example.

ADP Virtual assistant now integrates with Workplace Chat so people get on-demand, convenient access to their HR and pay information within Workplace. Your entire organisation is immediately empowered to make quicker and better-informed decisions.

And, as with many of these hacks, you can achieve all of this with little or no extra effort required from HR.

Keep reading

• Workplace culture: what it is and how to create a positive culture in your organisation
• What is diversity and inclusion?
• What are organisational values and why are they important?