Automating Rewards Processes: The Top 3 Every Organization Should Automate Today

Automation is transforming HR departments. From running payroll to managing vacation days to onboarding new employees, almost every area of human resources has been simplified by automation. Automating rewards and its supporting processes, however, often get overlooked when HR departments tackle digital transformations.

There are some enormous benefits to automating HR initiatives like employee rewards. Chief among them are increased efficiency and improving the employee experience, says Tim Reitsma, the cofounder of People Managing People.

“Efficiency tops the list as being the most tangible benefit of automation, speeding up tasks that are otherwise repetitive, time-consuming and prone to human error,” he explains.

What’s more, there are several ways automation improves the employee experience. They’ll experience less friction and more transparency. And because HR will be freed up from manual processes, employees will benefit from your team’s increased attention on employee-focused initiatives like culture building and creating new rewards.

Below are the three rewards processes you should consider automating immediately.

Onboarding Employees Onto Rewards Schemes

The goal of onboarding is to get employees settled and ready to succeed as quickly as possible, write Wyzetalk’s Sinazo Sibisi and Gys Kappers. That requires onboarding processes designed with this goal in mind — and that’s getting even harder as more and more employees are working remotely.

There are a lot of administrative tasks to complete when onboarding new employees. The more you can automate, such as the signup process for rewards, the easier it is for both you and your new employee. Each automated task is one less on your plate and goes a long way to making that new employee feel confident in your organization’s professionalism and valued from the start.

Creating and Delivering Total Reward Statements

A total reward statement is a personalized rundown of all of the benefits that an employee receives from their employer, says Tim Kellett, a pay and reward expert at PayData.

“The total reward statement is designed to highlight everything that the employee has benefited from, both financially and non-financially, as part of their overall reward package. This is a very simple way of showing the true value of your business reward scheme.”

Creating a personalized statement for every employee can be extremely time-consuming, however. At some large organizations with thousands of staff, it can be practically impossible. That’s what makes it ripe for automation.

Rather than create total reward statements by hand, use a total rewards platform to automate the process. With a platform, each reward statement is automatically updated every time a benefit changes for an individual employee.

Getting Employee Rewards Feedback

Implementing a system for ongoing feedback is vital. Rather than manually sending out emails at regular intervals to collect rewards-related feedback, HR teams should look to rewards software that can automate the feedback process.

By allowing users to submit feedback on the same platform they use to access their rewards, HR managers don’t just save themselves time, they also make it much more likely employees will provide feedback in the first place.

You don’t need to automate every part of your rewards process. Indeed, over-automating employee rewards can make your plan appear less genuine and meaningful. But by automating the administrative processes that underpin it, you free up your team’s time to focus on the things that matter.

Images by: Mimi Thian, Tim Gouw