HR process automation: how are HR professionals using AI?

Did you know that 80% of HR leaders and managers use AI at work several times per week? And that HR teams are increasingly turning to AI to stay efficient and competitive?*

Today’s top HR professionals aren’t just recognizing AI’s potential — they’re actively leveraging it to save time, boost productivity, and make more data-driven decisions across their most critical functions. 

But how, and in which areas? How do you know where to start? Do you really need to use AI to stay competitive? And does implementing AI within your HR department mean spending all day on ChatGPT? Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

We’ve outlined six primary ways HR professionals are using AI, so you, too, can implement it to save hours and elevate team performance. Let’s dive in!

*Leapsome’s Workforce Trends Report, 2024
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6 top HR processes that People professionals automate with AI

Artificial intelligence takes automation to the next level. Beyond handling repetitive tasks, AI can process vast amounts of data, provide actionable insights, and tailor suggestions to your organization’s needs.

Modern HR platforms like Leapsome now have built-in AI automation capabilities, which are incredibly useful for various People management tasks — including the following six key areas.

“Instead of spending days sifting through our latest engagement survey to pinpoint initiatives that truly make a difference, we use Leapsome AI.

It not only analyzes survey results but also suggests actionable plans that deliver maximum value. Plus, the AI agent streamlines daily HR tasks by summarizing performance reviews, organizing to-do lists, and even constructing comprehensive competency frameworks.

By harnessing the power of AI, we make the most of our analytics and can immediately focus on the right levers for improvement — allowing us to dedicate more time to our people, the most important part of every company.

This makes HR work at Leapsome significantly easier and more impactful.”

— Marie Hehlke, Senior People Enablement Manager at Leapsome

1. Performance management

Our research revealed that 36% of People professionals cite performance management as one of the key areas they want to automate. Indeed, using AI to automate your performance management system makes it easier to keep on top of key moments of the employee lifecycle and draw meaningful conclusions from evaluations.

AI features can also save you time on administrative tasks, allowing you to focus on making assessment conversations more enjoyable and collaborative, coming up with new learning and development opportunities, and checking in with team members on a deeper level. 

To get more granular, AI-powered, automated performance management can help with: 

• Synthesizing performance reviews to generate summaries with actionable insights

• Identifying strengths and highlighting areas for growth

• Scheduling regular appraisals and 360° reviews for continuous performance management

• Facilitating and synthesizing anonymous team feedback to enable continuous growth

• Recognizing, acknowledging, and rewarding strong performance

“AI tools help monitor and evaluate employee performance through data-driven target-setting, tracking KPIs, and offering feedback. This ensures timely reviews and minimizes human bias.”

— Flor Farsadi, HR consultant

Tools like Leapsome Reviews can summarize performance assessments and identify strengths and areas for improvement. With this knowledge, managers can suggest specific courses of action for each employee — like training initiatives and other development recommendations (for example, a workshop on active listening and a book on effective listening skills).
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An AI-powered assistant like Leapsome’s Leapy can even help you prioritize initiatives, summarize all feedback for a particular employee, and suggest ideas to make team members’ performance reviews extra effective — and focused on growth.

2. Goal-setting

AI-powered HR tools can help professionals create OKRs with just a one-sentence prompt and two clicks, and suggest tailored key results and initiatives that they can customize to fit their needs.

These tools also use automation to keep team members accountable by prompting them to track progress and check in with colleagues and managers to identify and overcome blockers.

Leapsome Goals helps people create meaningful OKRs and SMART goals (as well as individual performance objectives) in minutes. For example, an HR team member’s quarterly objective might be “Increase employee satisfaction and retention by implementing data-driven engagement initiatives.” This objective can be broken down into specific, measurable initiatives with clear timelines:

• Increase employee net promoter score (eNPS) by 5% by the end of Q2
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• Launch three new professional development programs with an 80% participation rate by week 8 of the quarter
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• Complete a comprehensive review of the current recognition and rewards program and implement two data-backed improvements by week 10

This combination of AI and automation helps individual contributors feel more confident in setting their goals and gives them initial ideas when stuck. At the same time, it enables managers and HR professionals to establish team-wide goals more quickly and monitor overall objective progress more efficiently.

Goal progress can be tracked and updated through regular check-ins, team meetings, and performance reviews, ensuring continuous alignment and accountability
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3. Day-to-day administration

A major use case for AI and automation is simplifying and speeding up essential yet repetitive tasks that would otherwise take up a significant portion of an HR professional’s schedule.

As Marie Richter, Fractional Chief of People Officer and HR consultant, explains: “AI and automation aren’t replacing HR — they’re empowering it. By embracing these technologies to automate routine tasks, HR professionals can focus on what truly matters: strategy, employee experience, and driving organizational change.”

Using AI and automation for regular administrative work can make HR teams more efficient, saving time and resources, reducing the risk of human error, and enabling them to focus on more complex tasks that better utilize their talents and experience.

Key areas where HR technology can support your admin include:

• Employee data management, including maintaining accurate records and reducing data inconsistencies

• Document management, including streamlining HR file storage, retrieval, and management — as well as facilitating e-signatures.

• Attendance management, including creating and assigning policies, processing leave requests, and managing team holiday calendars.

• Data collection, analysis, and reporting for data-driven insights and smart, long-term planning.

💡 Using a comprehensive HR platform with advanced AI features (like Leapsome) can support you with all the above!

Our AI-powered HRIS enables People teams to streamline and simplify their daily People management tasks.

Even better, we’ve also got plenty of engagement and enablement features like Reviews, Goals, and Learning, so you can handle all HR under one roof.

4. Onboarding and offboarding

Your HR team likely has to repeat onboarding and offboarding tasks often — especially if your organization is growing quickly. Those areas are prime examples of when AI and automation can be beneficial for HR and all employees.

AI-powered automation can lend a hand with the following:

• Launching workflows for onboarding or offboarding

• Building learning paths and training materials for new joiners or people moving into new positions within the organization

• Organizing check-ins or exit interviews (including templates on how to conduct these conversations)

• Prompting employees for feedback at optimal moments during onboarding or offboarding — and analyzing their responses for continuous improvement

5. Learning and development

HR technology is transforming how organizations approach learning and development. It’s empowering People teams to get large-scale training programs off the ground faster, so team members can progress in their careers and work toward their goals more quickly and effectively.

LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report reported that tomorrow’s success requires “skills agility — harnessing the right skills at the right time for the right work. To unlock skills agility for their organizations, L&D pros must first let go of time-consuming tasks of the past — like laboring over custom content and lengthy training sessions. AI holds great promise for personalization, allowing more individuals to chart their professional destinies.”

Furthermore, HR consultant Flor Farsadi elaborates on how People professionals can leverage HR technology like Leapsome Learning in their organizations: “AI tools help HR professionals by identifying skills gaps and recommending relevant learning paths. They can personalize development plans for employees, fostering skill growth and retention.”

Additional areas where technology can enhance learning and development include:

• Organizing and managing learning materials
• Tracking course completion and participation
• Managing development programs
• Collecting and organizing feedback
• Maintaining training records

💡 Consider using a comprehensive platform like Leapsome that combines learning management features with other employee development tools. 

This can help you create structured paths for learning and career development while maintaining clear documentation of employee progress.

6. Payroll

As a regular, repetitive task that involves many moving parts, payroll automation is an excellent candidate for AI and automatic processes. Digital tools can assist with:

• Managing employee data and documentation in a centralized system
• Time tracking
• Maintaining accurate payroll records
  

Automation can also make it easier for employees to manage their leave planning, for example, with self-service portals. These portals can also empower employees to:

• Track their work hours
• Access their payroll documentation
• Update their personal information

💡 Consider using a comprehensive HR platform like Leapsome, which combines core HR and people enablement features with payroll management capabilities.

Our platform helps you maintain organized employee records, streamline time tracking, and manage payroll-related documentation efficiently.

With features for employee data management, time tracking, and integration capabilities with payroll systems, you can create a more streamlined workflow for your HR and payroll processes.

The top benefits associated with HR process automation

The biggest benefit of AI-powered automation is that it takes a significant amount of work off HR professionals’ plates and instead allows them to dedicate that time to higher-value work. 

As Tracy Avin, Founder of TroopHR, noted in our 2024 Workforce Trends Report: “HR leaders who embrace AI and automation will lead the next wave of the function’s evolution. By adopting AI, People leaders will be better prepared to design advanced strategies for employee engagement and organizational success, driving innovation at an unprecedented pace.”

Let’s dig into that a little more. AI-assisted HR process automation:

• Enables you to gather and analyze large quantities of data in less time. This allows teams to make more informed, data-driven decisions, like where to invest their budgets for training and development or which performance improvement initiative to implement.

• Provides a smoother employee experience. For example, delivering a more seamless onboarding process, enabling employees to set more relevant goals and OKRs, and supporting a seamless payroll experience. This will also improve employee retention.

• Streamlines admin tasks. This means HR teams have more time for strategic and more complex work, such as developing enablement initiatives, building a better company culture, or helping the organizational plan for growth.

• Supports compliance through better organization. Modern HR platforms help maintain accurate employee records and organize documentation in a centralized system, making it easier to comply with documentation requirements while reducing the risk of errors.

🤖 Curious about harnessing the power of ChatGPT for HR? We have a comprehensive guide that covers just that, complete with top use cases and example prompts!

HR process automation: simplify, streamline, and save time with AI

When used thoughtfully, AI can streamline HR operations by automating repetitive tasks and manual processes, analyzing data for better decision-making, and enhancing the employee experience. Some of the best candidates for AI-powered automation include performance reviews, goal-setting, day-to-day administrative tasks, onboarding and onboarding, learning and development, and payroll.

If you’re interested in integrating the power of AI and automation into your HR strategy, look for a platform that already has those functions built in. Leapsome’s comprehensive HR software solution is an excellent example of this: we’re at the forefront of integrating AI into HR processes and on a mission to support HR excellence and drive high performance!
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Use Leapsome to harness the power of AI and automation for everything from onboarding to payroll to performance.

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