How can Chatbots make HR better

Simplicity. Something we all crave in everything we do, whether it’s at home or at the workplace. With the inclusion of technology in our lives, we have been able to simplify even the most mundane of tasks, especially at work. Organizations around the world are incorporating technology to increase productivity, and HR managers are being massively impacted by this evolution. Ordinary functions such as payroll, recruitment and attendance too, are being automated to conserve time and speed things up, through something as simple as a chatbot.

Chatbots are not new to the workplace — in fact, the first one is said to be coded somewhere around 1966 — however, the chatbot technology has evolved tremendously over the years. But how can a software program that provides an automated, interactive interface by simulating the way humans have conversations, help an HR manager? It’s quite simple, really!

Compared with the traditional ways of conducting business, chatbots bring forward a completely new way of engaging and interacting with employees. Take something routine, like leave and attendance, for instance, which is kind of a sore spot for employees and HR managers. It can get highly frustrating for an employee to walk up to her manager for trivial requests for taking a half-day, or working from home, it’s cumbersome for both the employee and the manager. A chatbot, such as the AttendanceBot for Slack, can ease things out for both parties.

Here is how

• Employees don’t need to meet, call or email their managers to ask for leave. A simple message to the chatbot will suffice, for multiple types of leave requests.
• HR managers can keep track of employee leaves through a simple timesheet, with in/out times recorded by the chatbot, through quick, one-word messages.
• Managers can be notified instantly about leave requests, and provide approval or denial immediately, in real time.
• The chatbot keeps all members of the team on the same page by announcing upcoming company holidays, upcoming leaves from team members and having a shared leave calendar.
• The chatbot lets an employee log leaves or run reports from on any device — Android/Windows/iOS — eliminating the need to install a new app or log on to a website.

The verdict? HR chatbots are bringing employees to the centre stage. The biggest advantage of using one is its simplicity, giving both employees in office and on the field, instant access to their managers, regardless of location or time zone, while also taking up most of the administrative tasks off the HR manager’s plate. Most HR products fail to gain traction since the software is clunky but given the ease of using a chatbot, most people no longer find HR tasks, a chore.

We at Anaek want to play our part in making leave and time tracking more fun and have built AttendanceBot to do just that. Try it now and let us know what else would you would want AttendanceBot to do for your team.

In fact, AttendanceBot has been so successful that it has inspired us to solve another HR pain point by making ExpenseTron — an expense tracking bot. More on that later.