21 Jun The $56bn dollar question: How can HR managers weather the admin storm?
Written by John Maguire, hcamag.com
Organisations in Australia and New Zealand are drowning in a sea of administration that is wasting $56 billion per year.
The astronomical figure is the result of research by The Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated and Coleman Parkes Research. The study found that workers across the two Antipodean nations are being swamped by non-essential tasks. A loss of $3,900 per year, per employee, per organisation was another stark statistic to emerge from the research.
The study concluded that workers are often torn between meeting customer needs and expectations, with 19 percent of respondents finding it difficult to complete daily tasks due to “workplace complexity”.
Speaking with HC Online, Peter Harte, managing director of Kronos Australia, advocated HR managers carrying out reviews of current practice in order to alleviate the administrative burden on their organisation.
“The first thing that HR managers can do is look at their current systems, asking the questions about how people are managing their workforce, what is working and what isn’t working,” said Harte. “Too often employees are burdened by outdated systems, often even paper-based, when new systems are available which could be saving the organisation money, time and resources.”
Companies risk becoming anachronisms if they do not embrace technology when handling administration. It is, believes Harte, a no-brainer today that many aspects of HR management should be automated.
“HR managers need to think about automating processes,” he said. “If the task is important, sometimes it can be done without someone spending two tedious hours completing it.
“Freeing up an employee’s time will not only benefit the business’s bottom line, but will also empower the employee to focus on the role they were hired for, keeping them more engaged. There are numerous workforce management solutions that can help HR managers identify the processes that can be automated.”
The report found that if wasted time was reduced by just one hour per week, per employee, this would save organisations $1,548 per employee, per year.
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