Chatbots have become a household name in the HR industry as its technology improves.

Global trends revealed that HR chatbots would see an estimated investment of $4.5 billion by 2021 due to an increasingly distributed remote workforce caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. HR chatbot solutions empower HR teams to engage with each remote employee on an individual basis and detect any issues that need escalation for human engagement.

The increased accessibility to HR is incredibly valuable to employees since they are currently unable to have in-person conversations with HR teams. Leveraging an automated communication system also allows your HR team to focus their time on the more sophisticated needs of employees, particularly in areas involving the development of career management plans. This article outlines top HR chatbot benefits you can take advantage of in a remote working environment.

1. Improves IT Help Desk for employees

Answering employee questions takes up a massive portion of your HR’s work hours. Often, they may find themselves answering the same queries several times and guiding employees through similar scenarios, thereby lowering general productivity levels. HR chatbot solutions offer a 24/7 self-service help desk for your employees by responding to their questions, updating work statuses, and resolving IT issues immediately.

Common HR chatbot features work as the initial point of contact to address basic employee questions and routing more challenging queries to human executives. Having an excellent support team to guide your employees can bring a positive impact on employee satisfaction and retention. It also helps that chatbots can work with ticket management and virtual onboarding of new employees.

HR chatbots today come in multiple shapes and sizes and have varying capabilities. You can check CompareCamp’s list of remote support software to explore solutions you can integrate into your existing processes.

2. It eases employee training

With employees having to work from home, the need for organizations to impart proper training becomes more apparent in ensuring that they remain productive. Training presents an excellent opportunity to brush up the skills of all employees, but many organizations find development opportunities to be expensive and time-consuming.

An HR chatbot helps employees in building and improving their professional skills to elevate their performances regardless of their locations. It can also deliver expert knowledge to your employees at any time on any device, enabling them to become more aware of safety practices and proper procedures of basic company tasks. Providing the necessary training creates an overall knowledgeable staff that can work independently without constant help or supervision from managers which is equally important in a remote working environment.

3. Enhances employee communication

Increased communication between employees and management lets you resolve issues and concerns immediately while simultaneously increasing employee morale, productivity, and commitment. Unfortunately, maintaining excellent employee engagement and communication is becoming more challenging for organizations due to a lack of control and a myriad of remote communication tools available.

Using chatbots with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities allows organizations to engage with employees in transactional engagements and day-to-day operations. An HR policy chatbot can help employees obtain paid-time-off information, leave status, swap shifts with a colleague, or view payslips with a quick message. You can also deploy chatbots on all of your company’s communication channels and make internal communication seamless for employees.

4. Automate Workflows

Workflow automation promotes real-time collaboration and consistent administrative management for remote HR teams. Automation is particularly attractive when your organization is faced with a complex web of processes within your HR management. Delays in getting the necessary signatures and challenges in remote working can have a detrimental impact on the future performance of your employees.

Chatbot solutions help you build automated workflows that can guide your HR teams in helping remote employees get approval from other departments and ensuring smooth-sailing processes. The automated workflow also ensures consistency in forms and procedures while simultaneously reducing the need for re-work and errors. It also ensures employees don’t fall through administrative cracks as they navigate the work-from-home (WFH) setup.

5. It accelerates the onboarding process

The adoption of Conversational AI can transform different aspects of HR, including recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new employees. HR teams gather necessary information such as tax forms and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) from new employees during onboarding. However, collecting information from every employee can be time-consuming and could exhaust your organization’s resources.

HR chatbots accelerate the onboarding process by answering queries of new hires through the conversational interface. Using chatbots, employees can directly interact with the bot regarding their team’s whereabouts and updates within the organization. It can also collect employee information, complete forms, and assists in registration by eliminating paperwork and reducing dependency on human HR.

The COVID-19 pandemic has redefined how businesses and their employees are going to work and interact in the future. It has propelled the rise and importance of adopting Workflow automation and Conversational AI technology such as chatbots into HR processes to ensure that an organization reaches its business goals.

Workativ Assistant is a workplace support automation solution that allows you to automate common employee issues and execute automated processes for their requests and inquiries. It provides multiple integrations with third-party solutions such as Jira, IBM Control Desk, Zoho People, Box, Dropbox, Okta, Office 365, and BambooHR. Try Workativ today by signing up for a FREE now