Too many tools, not enough time? How integrations can help you streamline HR at your company

In the recent past and the last year especially, everyone’s tech stack has gotten bigger. The surface-level benefits are obvious. Adding high-quality HR tools to your stack provides you with more data, more insights, and allows you to make faster, more effective decisions than before. Great news, right? After all, all top-performing companies rely on the richness of their data.

But a bigger tech stack doesn’t necessarily mean a better one. Too many tools can result in knowledge siloing and data loss due to the spread of information across multiple platforms. So how do you keep your tech stack stacked while still streamlining HR processes at your company?

The answer: integrations. Integrations are connections between applications that allow for easy information sharing. And those bridges are key to making your various HR solutions work together. By orienting your HR processes around a single hub, with plenty of well-chosen integrations attached to it, you can make every aspect of your HR workflow—from data sharing to communication to payroll—leaner and more effective.

An overfilled tech stack weighs down your workflow...

An overfilled tech stack creates data that is messy and decentralized. This creates an unwieldy workflow that will result in a lot of your HR professionals spending more time than they need to on menial tasks.

Make no mistake: maintaining your tech stack takes time. Whether you use one tool or one hundred, your HR team has to spend considerable time updating, maintaining, and correcting data. But here’s the rub: the more platforms you use, the more time they’ll have to dedicate to this task.

An overfilled tech stack also creates knowledge silos as vital data is spread across multiple platforms. This results in limited sharing of information and no single source of truth to consultfor your HR team. Siloing can also result in crucial HR data falling between the cracks and becoming inaccessible altogether, particularly if you don’t have a sturdy tracking plan.

Poor workflow issues don’t just affect your HR professionals, either. If your data is hard to access, it’s harder for your HR department to pursue meaningful initiatives like salary transparency and diversity in hiring.

...while integrations help you make each part of your workflow more efficient

Integrations come in all shapes and sizes, catering to all aspects of your HR team’s activities:

• Data management integrations allow for the sharing of key information across different departments in your organization. For example, cloud integration can help your HR department link up with your finance team to share information and tackle cost leakages (more on that later).
• Organizational integrations, like bambooHR and Workday, help you create and update org charts, maps, and reports.
• Payroll and expense-tracking integrations help you break down compensation and benefits dispensation by group within your company. This will enable you to keep track of expenses and propose future changes. Sapling and Carta are two good examples of this kind of integration.
• Communication and knowledge-sharing integrations help make knowledge sharing in your HR department more straightforward. For example, Slack’s integration with ChartHop’s HR management platform allows you to sync profile pictures, send notifications, and communicate directly from your org charts.
• Coaching and productivity integrations are useful for helping new employees settle into your company quickly and successfully. Given that more than 40% of new hires leave within their first 90 days at a company, stopping that new-hire churn should be a priority for any HR team.
• Recruitment integrations can assist your HR team when they’re on the trail of new talent. For example, an integration that sends your HR pros a notification when a candidate has just finished filling out an application.

If you’re using a separate tech solution for each of these elements of your HR workflow, your HR team might experience vertigo from bouncing between disconnected apps. But by using integrations plugged into one central platform, you can make access to all these features seamless and direct.

Integrations unlock automated, streamlined HR

Integrations help streamline HR by automating many of your team’s basic processes. When your HR team doesn’t have to worry about manually bringing data together, they can focus on driving action from it.

With a platform like ChartHop that offers multiple integrations, your HR superstars can automate processes on your org charts and spreadsheets. This frees up time for them to focus on hiring, developing talent already within your ranks, and focusing on other process improvements.

Integrations can also help centralize your data in one place, leading to reporting that is more insightful and easier to compile. Your HR team is saved the hassle of aggregating reports from multiple solutions or laboriously checking data accuracy on one platform against data on another platform.

On top of helping to make your salary payouts more regular, integrations can also help give your HR department tighter control over—and insight into—your payroll. Having your payroll data spread across multiple databases can lead to cost leakage, mainly if your company provides a lot of benefit payouts. Those entirely avoidable, erroneous costs (e.g., payments on tools that are no longer used or training course fees that are still being paid for ex-employees) can mount up fast. Consolidating that data in one place gives your team a better chance to spot leakage and prevent it.

The single source of truth created with an integrated database is also excellent when it comes to compliance. HR departments need to minimize their liability by keeping step with any changes in legislation and auditing requirements and keeping reliable track of contractual materials. Not only does an integrated workflow help your HR department become more accurate in these areas, but it also allows your company to offer greater transparency to your employees. With all those documents in one place, your employees are free to assess pay differences, how perks and benefits are awarded, and differences in contract type.

An integrated HR process gives you more time for the good stuff

Having more tools buys you more information, but having integrations buys you something even more valuable—time.

Your HR professionals can exert a profoundly positive impact on your company if they’re left to do what they do best—focusing on making the right hires, coaching and developing internal talent, and improving employee wellness. To free them up to perform these tasks, you need to minimize the time they spend on platform maintenance, data-chasing, cross-referencing, and manual reporting.

Integrations are your fast-pass to this outcome. No bid to streamline HR at your company could be complete without the right integration pack.