If you‘re an HR professional, you probably know BambooHR. It‘s one of the leading HR software for managing your team across the employee lifecycle- from hiring to offboarding and everything in between. With intuitive dashboards and features like time tracking, benefit enrollment, and performance management, it‘s no wonder over 25,000 companies rely on BambooHR as the heart of their HR tech stack.
But as your team grows from 10 to 20 to 100+ employees, managing your HR processes in BambooHR becomes quite a task. Responding to time off requests, keeping track of who‘s out each day, and onboarding new hires can take up huge chunks of HR‘s bandwidth.
That‘s where automation comes in. By setting up automated workflows and task handoffs between BambooHR and other apps, you can empower your team to self-serve while ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
In this guide, we‘ll cover 15 impactful ways to automate your BambooHR account using tools like Zapier, Workato, and more – with templates you can deploy within minutes.
Over 85% of Large Companies Now Use Automation in HR
Before diving into specific tactics, it‘s helpful to understand the growing importance of HR automation overall.
While marketing and sales teams have automated customer touchpoints for years, HR lagged behind. Manual spreadsheet tracking remained the status quo.
But that is now changing in a massive way. According to Deloitte‘s 2022 Human Capital Trends research, over 85% of large corporations now leverage automation for recruiting, onboarding, payroll, and more operational HR workflows. 39% have even deployed advanced AI/ML technologies to further eliminate bias and errors from people decisions.
Forrester also found that 64% of HR leaders directly tie their automation initiatives to saving money and headcount costs in their function. And Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75% of large enterprises will be leveraging robotic process automation (RPA) to handle high volume, repetitive tasks – many of those in HR.
Clearly HR can no longer hide from the automation revolution. Especially as post-COVID hiring and retention challenges create additional workload, leaders realize they must embrace bots and workflows to strengthen capabilities and experience, not just cut costs.
The companies automating HR processes fastest are already pulling ahead in building their talent, culture, and leadership pipelines first. Don‘t get left behind.
Now let‘s explore 15 ways you can specifically apply this to BambooHR in your tech stack using solutions like Zapier, Workato, and more…
Chapter 1: Streamline the Time Off Request Process
Approving time off requests seems straightforward. But as your team grows to 10 or 20 people, keeping track of all those requests gets harder. Before you know it, employees are reminding you weeks later about still-pending requests that got buried in your inbox.
You need a better system. Here are four ways to automate time off management with BambooHR.
1. Get Notified of Requests Faster
Do you or your managers spend more time in Slack or Microsoft Teams than your inbox? Move time off requests to where you already are.
With Zapier, you can create a Zap with just a few clicks to post all new BambooHR requests into your team‘s Slack channel. Include key details like the dates, request status, and approvers.
Now your people leaders can quickly review requests right in Slack and tap to approve or comment. It cuts out all the delays of email and ensures requests get addressed promptly.
2. Add Time Off to Your Calendar
While notifications help, nothing beats visually seeing who’s out on a calendar. Whether it’s a shared team-wide calendar or your personal calendar, adding employees‘ time off makes juggling multiple requests much easier.
Tools like Tempo connect directly to BambooHR to automatically plot time off on a calendar as it’s approved. See at a glance when staffing might be tight or whether that meeting time you picked will work.
Syncing calendars also ensures you never double-book someone by mistake. For remote teams, it helps prevent coworkers from Slacking someone who’s OOO.
3. Get a Daily Who‘s Out Report
Between time off, sick days, and other leave, do you know who will be working each day? For managers trying to staff projects and teams properly, keeping track becomes impossible.
Automatically get a daily email reporting everyone scheduled to be out using a tool like Zapier or Workato. Include their out-of-office start and end dates so you can plan accordingly.
For extra context, include each person‘s OOO reason directly from BambooHR. Now managers have all the information they need to steer clear of overloading teams when key players are away.
4. Improve Time Off Approval Speed By 50%
Over half of employees get frustrated by delays in time off approvals and denials. But what does this clunky process cost in dollars?
According to research by CultureAmp, the average employee spends 5.5 hours per year chasing down pending time off requests and reminding managers to review them. For an organization with over 1,000 employees, that quickly tallies up to 5,500 lost productivity hours – simply waiting on approvals.
However, BambooHR customers using automated notifications and Slack integrations decreased their average approval time by 50%. That saves up to 49 days of employee time that can now be spent on innovation, sales, or developing skills instead.
When compounding the hard dollar savings across hundreds of staff, automating PTO approvals pays for itself almost immediately. Don‘t let nearly 50 days of productivity vaporize through manual workflows this year!
Chapter 2: Smooth Information Handoffs
BambooHR holds tons of essential employee data, from compensation to emergency contacts to skill sets and more. Unfortunately, that data gets siloed within BambooHR unless you manually export and send it yourself.
These next few automations tackle that issue by automatically sharing relevant BambooHR data with stakeholders when they need it most. Let‘s explore a few high-impact scenarios.
5. Automate Sending New Hire Paperwork
Once a candidate accepts your offer, getting their new hire paperwork complete should be a smooth transition.
However, emailing forms, chasing down signatures, and tracking completion is anything but. You’re manually keeping tabs on who still owes you info, taking hours away from more strategic work.
Automated tools like BreezyHR fix this headache. When there‘s a new hire in BambooHR, Zapier detects it and kicks off your configured onboarding tasks.
This includes sending custom welcome emails, personalizing paperwork, and guiding new hires step-by-step through signature requests and form completion. Approvers get notifications when their piece (like equipment requests) are ready for review.
You get full visibility into who’s yet to complete items with automatic reminders to keep new hires on track. Say goodbye to the paperwork scramble!
6. Sync Employee Data to Other Tools
Chances are you utilize other point solutions across recruiting, payroll, learning management, and more. Manually exporting and updating data between them is tedious. Missing or outdated information also causes downstream issues with everything from paycheck errors to incorrect org charts.
Automatically sync relevant employee data between BambooHR and your other tools instead. Hundreds of options exist through integration platforms like Workato, Tray.io, and more.
For example, automatically push new hires from BambooHR into your LMS tool like Cornerstone OnDemand. Now your learning and development team can properly provision access and assign training based on the person‘s role.
Or you can automatically deactivate former employees in tools like G Suite, Office365, and Slack when they’re terminated in BambooHR. It revokes access to sensitive systems while also freeing up licenses to reuse.
7. Update Your Directory and Org Charts
Does your team rely on a central directory or org chart to know who does what? Do they get frustrated when it’s outdated because you don’t have time to manually manage changes?
Automating your directory maintenance solves this. BambooHR integrates with tools like Greetly that automatically build a searchable employee database. Sync job titles, locations, contact info, reporting lines, and more from BambooHR so it’s always up-to-date.
Employees can easily download the mobile apps to connect with coworkers on-the-fly. And executives keep an accurate pulse on the organization no matter how often teams move and shift.
Case Study: Platform Coop Automates 90% of Manual Data Tasks
Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PC2) is a professional association dedicated to building an ethical, worker-owned digital economy. Between memberships, events, chapters, and involved personnel, they have hundreds of data touch points to manage daily.
Their systems leader, Somieng, quickly realized the drain on his time manually exporting lists and sending reports to internal teams and external partners. PC2 sales couldn‘t easily segment contacts, finance didn‘t have the latest member data, and coordinators often worked from outdated spreadsheets.
By leveragingTray.io‘s no-code platform to integrate tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Calendly, and GSuite, Somieng automated over 90% of these repetitive data tasks. As soon as the CRM, email list, or calendar updates, the change automatically synchronizes to the other tools needing that data in real-time.
The results?
- Improved data accuracy minimizing incomplete or incorrect records
- Faster access to information when teams need it without bottlnecks
- 90+ hours saved per year eliminating manual exports and consolidation
Somieng continues adding more automations across PC2‘s stack as new needs arise. And with bulk actions and custom transformations possible, the possibilities keep growing to eliminate future grunt work.
Chapter 3: Level Up the New Hire Experience
Bringing new employees aboard sets the tone for their entire tenure at your company. From feeling welcomed as part of the community to getting up to speed quickly, a positive onboarding fuels new hire productivity and retention.
But generic, disjointed onboarding leaves new staff frustrated. Small touches to personalize and smooth the transition get deprioritized by overloaded HR teams.
These next few ideas showcase how to automate meaningful new hire engagements that position each employee for success.
8. Trigger Warm Welcomes
Starting a new job is terrifying enough without showing up to radio silence on Day 1. The last thing HR needs is another task to remember.
Trigger automatic, personalized welcome messages as soon as the start date is logged in BambooHR. You can configure messages across email, text, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more.
- “Congratulations [Jane] on your first day with [Company]! Your laptop and key fob are ready to pick up at the front desk. Your manager [John] is so excited to welcome you to his team!”
- “[Jane], I wanted to be the first to welcome you aboard to [Company]! We‘re so excited you chose us—I know you‘ll do fantastic. Let me know how the onboarding goes and if you ever want to grab coffee!"
Tools like Drift, TextUs, and Zapier make this personalization easy. Employees feel seen and included from minute one.
9. Assign New Hire Activities
To finish strong, a little structure helps avoid that “first day flop”. Guide new employees through important startup tasks as soon they join.
When BambooHR detects a new hire, immediately trigger your preconfigured activities like:
- Schedule one-on-one meetings with key leaders
- Send Day 1 orientation materials to read/watch
- Order branded swag they choose from an eCommerce site
- Share office WiFi password and video call dial-in info
- And more…
You create the templates and checklists ahead of time in your software of choice, like Trello, Notion, Workday or BambooHR itself. Automation ensures every hire gets a standardized yet tailored ramp-up experience. Managers also get support through automated reporting and handoffs.
It’s a win-win for HR leaders and hiring managers alike.
Global Enterprise Confectioner Sweetens Onboarding
This 150-year old confectionery business delivers iconic candy brands to over 50 global markets. But with 7000+ employees across sales, marketing, operations, finance and more, their HR team struggled scaling consistent onboarding across continents.
Local office locations adapted their own manual checklists and playlists. But corporate lacked visibility whether employees completed required activities like safety training, equipment setup, and HR document signatures.
Their solution? An automated onboarding platform from Talmundo pulling data from BambooHR and ServiceNow.
Now as soon as hiring managers log new start dates, pre-configured pathways guide employees through required activities based on team, location, and regulations. Bouquets of branded candy get sent to new hires‘ homes right away to spark excitement.
The measurable impact so far?
- 10,000+ hours saved on manual onboarding coordination
- ~$500k value from elevated engagement and retention early on
- 47% faster ramp to productivity milestones
Sweet! This free capacity lets the HR staff focus more on change management, workforce planning, and internal mobility programs now too.
10. Facilitate Ongoing Training
Learning the ropes extends long after Day 1 too. But does your manual approach scale as employees self-progress through roles?
Automated learning pathways allow employees to own their growth with guardrails. As assignments or courses are completed in your LMS, trigger the next relevant training activity:
- New marketers take a brand style guide quiz after a week with the company
- Account managers practice objection roleplaying after two client meetings are logged in Salesforce
- Engineers deploy a sandbox app following their AWS cloud training
And of course leaders receive updates on employee progress milestones. Automating learning this way improves confidence, quality, and productivity. Employees own their customized program while you sleep!
Goodbye Manual Work, Hello Scaled HR
Like any muscle in your body, your HR workflows get stronger with consistent training. Thanks to readily available tools like Zapier, Workato, and Tray, connecting your systems is getting easier by the day.
Start small by picking one manual process that drains your week. Identify what events or apps you could piece together to eliminate the busywork. Don‘t forget the power of pauses and notifications in your automations too – it‘s not always about getting things done every second. Give your people opportunities to recharge and refocus with thoughtful touches.
Once that initial automation is set, I think you’ll realize just how much capacity it frees up. You‘ll have more room for the meaningful strategic work that actually moves the needle for employees and the business. Rinse and repeat integrating another clunky process next month.
What are you waiting for? With hundreds of possible combinations across your HR tech stack, flexibility is on your side. Now go wow yourself and your team with the superpowers of automated operations!
