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HR Workflows: How They Save You Time

Table of contents
January 14, 2025

As an HR professional, your attention is always pulled in different directions. On any given day, you may be reviewing applicants, onboarding a new employee, supporting benefits enrollment, sending reminder emails for performance reviews, or approving leave requests. 

An emphasis on the human part of human resource management is part of what makes an organization a great place to work, but sometimes the administrative demands of the function can crowd out the time and headspace needed for people-focused work. HR workflows help change that. Many HR tasks are time-consuming data-entry activities or steps that must be completed in order, which makes them perfect candidates for automation with an HR workflow. 

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Understanding HR Workflow Automation in Modern Business

While the term workflow often refers to HR software, it broadly encompasses how teams accomplish their work. Traditional HR processes might involve toggling between spreadsheets and payroll systems — these are technically workflows, but without automation, they can be just as inefficient as manual processes.

Automated HR workflows are digital sequences that streamline HR processes from start to finish. These digital systems manage responsibilities such as onboarding new hires, conducting performance reviews, processing timesheets, and handling benefits enrollment. In doing so, HR workflows reduce the administrative burden on HR teams, managers, and employees alike. 

Sample Onboarding Workflow

A visual showing various roles and responsibilities belonging to IT, managers, and HR as it pertains to getting new hires up to speed.
A simplified onboarding workflow, showing the order of operations of a new hire's first 90 days. Automation can streamline most of these steps.

Workflows provide even further added value when integrated into a human resource information system (HRIS). Nested within an HR platform, workflows transform traditionally manual processes into automated sequences that trigger the right actions, notifications, and approvals at the right time — all the while ensuring a single system of record. An automated workflow within HR software marks a transition from inefficient workflow processes to workflow management.

Crucially, HRIS workflows also pull in the right stakeholders when necessary. Consider a new hire accepting an offer: Within an HR system, the workflow could initiate payroll setup, coordinate IT systems access, start benefits enrollment, and more, sending automated reminders to these various departments to begin the process. 

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Automated Workflows, Engagement, and Different Stakeholders

When it comes to people metrics, perhaps nothing is as influential on an organization as engagement. Long-running, empirical research by Gallup shows that engaged employees make for more profitable, productive, and high-performing companies.

As Lattice’s 2025 State of People Strategy Report put it, “If engagement was a color, it would be evergreen.” Our annual report found that engagement is the number one priority for HR teams for four years running, and more than half of high-performing organizations prioritize employee engagement. 

Automated human resources workflows, which benefit people teams most explicitly, pay dividends across the organization.

Employees

Across the employee lifecycle — from their first day to their last — employees benefit from automated, streamlined HR workflows.

New hires enjoy a smoother employee onboarding experience with properly sequenced tasks and on-time access to necessary resources. Existing employees benefit from faster response times to their HR-related requests and a more transparent process for everything from benefits enrollment to talent development opportunities.

Taken together, these daily efficiencies have a big impact on the employee experience, leading to greater employee satisfaction. 

Managers

Line managers often find themselves caught between their core responsibilities and HR-related ones. HR workflow automation helps managers navigate their people tasks more efficiently by making it clear what’s next on the to-do list, providing automated reminders, and streamlining approval processes. Whether approving time-off requests or completing performance evaluations, managers can handle responsibilities easily with HR workflows that identify their next steps.

As they optimize or eliminate HR-related tasks for managers, automated workflows support manager engagement — which can lead to greater engagement across teams. Indeed, Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report found that employees are more likely to be engaged when managers are engaged. 

HR Teams

For HR professionals, workflows dramatically reduce the time spent on repetitive or administrative tasks. Consider a typical employee performance review cycle: Without automation tools, HR staff might spend weeks coordinating schedules, sending reminders, and collating and tracking feedback. 

With an HRIS workflow that automates these actions, HR can skip toggling between manual administrative tasks and focus on higher-level, employee-centric strategies. Automated workflows free up HR team members’ time so they can more readily focus on initiatives that drive real value for employees and the company. 

There’s also a ripple effect: When HR professionals are freed from repetitive tasks, they become more engaged in their own work. This increased engagement often translates into better support for employees across the organization.

The end result is a more responsive, supportive workplace where employees and HR teams can focus on meaningful work rather than administration.

How HRIS Workflows Save Time and Drive Consistency

HRIS workflows benefit HR departments, front-line managers, and everyday employees thanks to their ability to: 

  1. Improve accuracy: Manual data entry increases the potential for errors, and that’s not ideal when it comes to employee record keeping. HR tech with automated workflow software minimizes repetitive manual tasks and reduces human error by guiding users through the correct process, every time.
  1. Enhance transparency and accountability: Employee workflows require input from different stakeholders across different departments, especially during the onboarding process. Without a centralized place to manage processes, tracking completion is tricky. An HRIS enables transparency for stakeholders, encourages accountability, and reduces the need for HR follow-up. 
  1. Support data-driven decision-making: With all your workflows stored in a centralized digital place (your HRIS), HR teams can collect and track relevant HR data across the org. Armed with numerical insights, human resources teams can analyze existing processes and work to improve them, optimizing processes, allocating resources more effectively, and — crucially — demonstrating the ROI of HR initiatives to the executive team. Workflow analytics can also uncover patterns in employee engagement and help HR teams proactively address potential retention issues before they become a problem. 
  1. Empower employees: With easy-to-follow step-by-step directions, automated HR workflows empower employees to autonomously manage HR-related tasks, like PTO requests or benefits enrollment. This removes the need for managers to act as intermediaries and allows employees to manage their own needs, tasks, and requests. 
  1. Boost compliance and ensure better record-keeping: HRIS workflows ensure that all the necessary steps to comply with employment laws or industry- and jurisdiction-specific regulations are taken and documented. HRISs store documentation securely in a centralized hub, making it easy to find relevant employee information.

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Essential HR Workflows That Drive Efficiency

HR workflows are most useful for automating administrative duties that involve lots of paperwork and data entry. Just ten years ago, HR teams were spending considerable time on these kinds of tasks, but today HRIS software has automated many of the most tedious ones. 

  • Onboarding: An onboarding workflow is a prime example of just how useful automation can be. Coordinating multiple actions across departments, from collecting documentation to setting up IT accounts, onboarding workflows streamline steps so they happen in the correct order and nothing is missed.
  • Offboarding: Offboarding workflows maintain security and compliance by automatically triggering system access revocations, exit interview scheduling, and asset recovery tracking. These workflows protect company assets and data during an employee separation while ensuring departing employees are handled consistently.
Automating review scheduling and reminder systems may also ensure higher completion rates and more timely feedback.
  • Performance Management Workflows: Performance review workflows eliminate the traditional chaos of review season. They automatically schedule reviews, send reminders, collect feedback, and guide both managers and employees through the process with clear steps and deadlines. This systematic approach supports more fair and equitable reviews while reducing the administrative overhead typically associated with performance management. 

    Beyond annual reviews, these workflows can manage continuous feedback programs, peer reviews, and 360-degree assessments. They can also track performance improvement plans, goal-setting initiatives, and career development conversations. By standardizing these processes, organizations ensure managers are using the same evaluation criteria across departments while maintaining flexibility for role-specific requirements. Automating review scheduling and reminder systems may also ensure higher completion rates and more timely feedback.
  • Personal Data Management Workflows: When employees need to update their information, automated workflows ensure changes are made correctly across all systems. Whether it's a new address, change of caregiver status, or updated emergency contact, the workflow pushes these changes through appropriate approval channels and updates relevant databases automatically.
    These workflows are particularly crucial for maintaining data integrity and compliance. When an employee updates their information, the change follows across multiple systems — from payroll to benefits administration — while the data remains secure and proper data protection protocols are followed.
  • Employee Communications: Emailing back and forth at the right moments or milestones requires organization and mindshare from an already busy people team. Communications workflows trigger automated messages during birthdays, work anniversaries, and even for merit increases and promotions.
Automated employee email in the Lattice platform, congratulating a recipient on their merit increase and sharing their new base pay.
Lattice workflows simplify standard employee communications and allow HR members or managers to plug in employees’ names, milestones, and managers to pre-configured messages. 
  • Recruitment Workflows: As an HR arena rife with administrative tasks and sequential processes, recruitment is one prime for automation. Workflows can streamline the entire hiring process from job posting to offer acceptance, automating key steps like applicant filtering, interview scheduling, and communication triggers.

    Modern recruitment workflows also integrate sophisticated candidate-tracking features to maintain detailed records of every interaction. These systems can parse resumes, track interview rounds, and collect standardized feedback from interviewers. For individuals moving through the candidate pipeline, recruitment workflows automatically trigger background checks, generate offer letters, and enable digital signatures. Throughout the process, automated notifications keep HR teams, hiring managers, and department heads aligned and informed.
  • Payroll and Benefits Processing: Payroll and benefits management is another admin-heavy part of HR that includes repetitive manual data entry. With payroll processing workflows, people teams can reduce input errors and run payroll more easily. Benefits enrollment workflows simplify the process for employees by guiding them through options while ensuring compliance with eligibility restrictions and deadlines. Taken together, these templated workflows reduce errors, make for more efficient data collection and validation, and streamline approval processes.

Getting It Done With HRIS Automation

Automated HRIS workflows are a crucial tool for balancing efficiency with the human element of HR management. These automated systems do more than just reduce admin burden — they fundamentally change how work gets done.

When HR teams gain time for strategic initiatives, managers can focus on leadership rather than administration, and employees enjoy faster, more consistent service, the impact across the organization is far-reaching. By reducing the time spent on routine tasks, HR workflows enable people teams to focus on what matters most: building engaging, productive workplaces where employees can thrive.

Schedule a demo of Lattice HRIS to learn more about how it can transform your HR processes. 

🌊 Go with the flow. Lattice HRIS automates the most time-consuming parts of the employee experience. For example, LTSE automated its 75-step onboarding process with workflows.

Check out a demo of Lattice HRIS to see how we can help you break free of admin work and spend more time on the fulfilling, people-facing work you signed up for.

⚙️ Set it and forget it. Once built, your workflows operate quietly in the background — no intervention necessary. Consider it autopilot for your most unglamorous (but critically important) work.

Want to see Lattice HRIS now? Give our platform a test drive immediately by checking out our interactive product tour.

Key Takeaways

  • Automated workflows save time by streamlining tasks like onboarding and payroll.
  • They reduce errors, improve consistency, and ensure processes run smoothly.
  • Employees enjoy faster responses and more transparent HR processes.
  • Managers and HR teams can focus on strategic work instead of admin tasks.
  • Workflows can also support compliance and record-keeping.

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