From recruitment to pay, benefits and rewards, here are five processes that organisations should use HR software to automate
Over recent years, the rise of technology and automation has impacted organisations and people in many ways. While it’s meant greater innovation and productivity for companies, it’s also meant job losses for many employees. But for HR professionals, the impact of automation looks much more positive.
Automated HR processes can streamline workflows, ensure processes are consistent, reduce the likelihood of errors, and help HR save time and money, which can be better spent on strategic people initiatives. Standardised, digitised, and automated processes are much faster, more consistent, and result in fewer errors than handling them manually. Automation also frees your team to work on higher-value activities.
With a range of HR software on the market, it can be difficult to separate its essential functions from the nice-to-haves. Here are our top eight processes and tasks you should automate using HR software – plus additional areas that are increasingly within reach for forward-thinking teams.
In this article:
- Notifications and reminders
- Recruitment
- Time and attendance record keeping
- Pay, benefits and rewards
- Background checking and screening
- Onboarding
- Performance management
- Learning and development
- Ready to automate your HR processes?
1. Notifications and reminders
HR teams are constantly having to juggle several tasks and responsibilities at once, but automating notifications and reminders can help them to make sure that no task is overlooked.
If there are any upcoming performance reviews, new starters, leavers, or key dates, HR software can remind HR teams and appropriate employees (such as line managers) about these events by sending automatic email alerts.
This will mean HR teams and employees are less likely to forget about tasks or due dates, and you’ll also spend less time chasing people to complete actions. Automation in this case can not only improve communication but can also aid compliance by helping to make sure vital actions are taken at the appropriate time.
If HR teams want to automate their notifications process, HR software can help. With Ciphr's notifications functionality, for example, you can set up automatic notification emails to prompt employees and managers when appraisals are due, when employees are starting or leaving, and if they exceed pre-determined absence levels. Notifications can also be triggered by any date-related events.
2. Recruitment
Automating the different stages of the recruitment process can help you save time and reduce costs, find the best candidate for the job more efficiently, and provide a smooth candidate experience.
Some organisations use machine learning models to optimise every word of a job posting, while others automate aspects of the hiring process using an applicant tracking system (ATS). ATS such as our recruitment software can streamline the recruitment process through automated emails, auto-reject questions, and self-service interview scheduling.
A modern recruitment module in your HR management system can also automatically:
- Book and schedule interviews
- Screen applications and CVs
- Scan and post to multiple job sites
- Optimise and distribute job adverts
- Send assessments to candidates
- Communicate with candidates throughout the process
- Notify relevant colleagues at each stage
Recruitment automation delivers a better, more consistent candidate experience, accelerates time-to-hire, improves your fill rate, and makes your recruitment team's lives much easier – without requiring complex emergent AI capabilities.
3. Time and attendance record keeping
For organisations in the retail or hospitality sector, managing time and attendance can be a long process – so investing in the right software to automate this task can make a big difference.
Our solutions integrate with specialist time and attendance software to help HR teams manage complex work patterns, create staff schedules and handle holiday, shift, and time-off requests.
4. Pay, benefits and rewards
Automating the pay, benefits and reward process is important if both HR and payroll professionals want to save time and effort.
When new hires join, an automated process can allow HR to quickly onboard them into the payroll system. Achieving this important task quickly means employees are likely to feel more satisfied in their new role through an increased sense of belonging and recognition.
Similarly, linking your central HR software with your employee benefits platform means that, when employees are eligible to access company benefits, they can do so automatically without HR having to carry out any additional admin work.
Working with payroll outsourcing companies can also help automate the payroll process. With our integrated HR and payroll solution, you can avoid duplication of work and manual data entry, while also improving the accuracy and security of your data. Employees can be auto-enrolled for pensions, often with the help of pension payroll software, which substantially reduce the amount of time you need to spend on pension administration.
Pay and rewards management is an open goal for automation because it typically involves vast amounts of manual data entry and repetitive tasks. Here are some of the crucial pay and rewards tasks you don’t need to handle manually:
- Create payroll reports and transmit them from HR to payroll software
- Calculate tax, overtime, holiday pay, and other deductions
- Process salary payments
- Benefits administration
- Expense management
- Manage paid leave
- Approve and aggregate timesheets
- Maintain and update employee records
- Notify employees and send payslips
5. Background checking and screening
The background checking process is traditionally a labour-intensive and time-consuming task. Automating this process reduces the risk of error and ensures that the right checks are carried out at the right stage for the right role. When you link your HR and recruitment software with solutions from background checking providers (such as our partners, Experian and TrustID), it can speed up your time-to-hire by automating admin-intensive, time-consuming background checks such as reference checks and criminal record checks. It can also help your organisation deliver a better candidate and employee experience – which is essential for hiring success and long-term employee retention.
6. Onboarding
A modern HR management system should automate all your manual pre-boarding and onboarding activities. Digital and automated onboarding ensures that new hires reliably have what they need for a great first day – however busy your team and the hiring manager. There's also a major compliance implication: you know the right background and right-to-work checks have been carried out. Tasks you can automate include:
- Collect references
- Send contracts
- Run background checks
- Remind managers about their new starters
- Arrange new computer equipment
- Set up email accounts
- Add new starters to the employee directory
- Confirm start date and bank details to the payroll team
- Send welcome workflows and communications
- Schedule first-day meetings
7. Performance management
Performance management is a major lever for every organisation's success. It plays a key role in making progress towards organisational goals, course-correcting faster, and improving employee engagement and retention. But it's often an area where organisations could improve – processes are frequently inconsistent, and manager competence and confidence can vary wildly, leading to poor review conversations that aren't valuable for anyone.
Automation can help enormously. The right HR management system should empower you to:
- Remind managers to prepare for appraisals
- Send pulse surveys and compile results
- Escalate grievances to HR
- Collate and send performance documentation
- Track employee performance against agreed metrics
- Send progress reports upwards
- Connect to learning management software to serve training needs
- Report on performance, and identify discrepancies and trends
- Auto-populate talent pools with top-performing employees for promotion
8. Learning and development
A strong learning function makes sense, both for your organisation and your people. Better learning upskills your workforce, helps you overcome skills shortages and reduces pressure on recruitment. At the same time, learning is an important part of the employee experience – which in turn, contributes to higher engagement and, ultimately, greater talent retention.
Modern HR systems integrate with LMS software, and can automate administrative tasks such as:
- Enrolling employees in relevant courses
- Building employee learning groups
- Curating and delivering customised learning journeys
- Notifying and reminding employees to complete activities
- Tracking learning uptake and subsequent performance
- Building smart organisational charts
- Analysing and reporting on any HR data in seconds
- Identifing trends and patterns at team or organisation level
- Improving workforce planning and modelling
Beyond automation: HR analytics
Any conversation about automating HR processes should also cover HR analytics. Sophisticated reporting, modelling, and forecasting is already possible with modern HR management systems – and many teams aren't using the full range of functionality on offer.
For example, it's perfectly possible – with the right HR management system – to:
- Build smart organisational charts
- Analyse and report on any HR data in seconds
- Create a single source of truth across your organisation
- Identify trends and patterns at team or organisation level
- Improve workforce planning and modelling
If your team isn't taking advantage of your existing HR software's analytics capabilities, this can be one of the fastest and most impactful improvements available to you.
Ready to automate your HR processes?
If you want to streamline your HR processes and reduce manual workload, the right HR software can make a significant difference. Ciphr’s HR solutions help you automate routine tasks, improve data accuracy, and support better decision-making across your organisation. Book a demo or explore our HR software to see how it can support your team.
This article was first published in August 2020. It was updated and republished in April 2026 for freshness, clarity, and accuracy.