4 Reasons to Apply Process Mining in Human Resources in 2024

Improving HR processes is fundamental for the improvement of each department and the organization overall. Process mining techniques are applied to human resources processes, among many other sectors and departments, such as healthcare and finance. Process mining in HR enables businesses to detect bottlenecks in processes, enhance employees’ experiences, and optimize the overall HR policies and strategies.

We have explored top HR technology trends that shape the future of human resources management. In this article, we provide top 4 process mining use cases in Human Resources and overall benefits for your HR team.

What is process mining in human resources?

Process mining provides insights about strategic factors along with other determinants and display the change of the processes in human resources. There are HR management tools that deal with HR processes. They reduce the time, costs, and complexity of tasks. However, these tools fail to recognize process changes and improvements. Thus, they are restricted to a performance assessment. As a result, they do not assess operational and strategic factors on HR processes, which process mining can tackle down.

How to apply process mining in human resources?

The applications of process mining in human resources range from handling employee requests to reimbursement. Here are four areas to apply process mining:

Recruitment process optimization

The recruitment process involves various stages, including candidate applications, interviews, job offers, and acceptances, each containing pertinent data. Process mining enables the HR department to manage the recruitment process data such that they can:

• Identify the speed at which the processes are executed
• Analyze the reasons behind candidate dropouts.

Efficient document generation

A significant challenge in HR is the considerable effort expended in generating documents like contracts. The creation of documents, inputting signatures, data updates, and documentation of correspondence are integral tasks. Large organizations have transitioned to the electronic signing tool to speed up the process and improve efficiency. This change in document generation provides more data to be analyzed.

• Process mining can be employed to uncover insights related to:
  • Responsible personnel.
  • Dates and durations.
  • Individuals and tasks involved in the document generation process.

HR query management

By applying process mining, organizations can analyze the efficiency of HR processes, how they answer employee inquiries, and which individuals are responsible for which tasks. This provides a holistic view of the HR query management and enables the team to optimize their management strategy.   

Flexible employee benefits schemes

Benefits schemes are plans provided by the HR to candidates and employees to attract them to the position. Leveraging process mining for benefit data analysis allows organizations to:

• Examine benefit choices.
• Evaluate the efficiency of enrollment processes.
• Determine the relevance and effectiveness of offered benefits.
• Optimize benefit schemes based on data-driven insights.

What are the benefits of process mining in human resources?

1. Empirical display of processes: Process mining provides empirical evidence on human resources processes and enables organizations to support the anecdotal evidence they gather for compliance. 
2. Easy track of issues and bottlenecks: With process mining, the problems and bottlenecks are easily detected. For instance, once a company discovers issues during the recruitment process and solves it, its talent acquisition process will accelerate consequently. A company with an improved recruitment process will be able to place the most suitable employees. That will affect the overall performance of the company to enhance faster.
3. Long-term development: Process mining provides insights about the HR processes in general, which helps businesses improve their long term strategies, such as:
   1. enhancing the onboarding process
   2. developing employee growth opportunities
   3. optimizing reimbursement strategies

What are the challenges of process mining in human resources?

Data privacy

Implementing process mining in HR requires IT teams to have access to HR data, which exposes candidate and employee personal data to other employees. Businesses can leverage homomorphic encryption which enables IT teams to manipulate encrypted data without needing to decrypt it first, thus protecting the privacy of employees and candidates.

Sufficient level of digitalization

Some companies want to employ process mining, but they lack the necessary level of digital engagement. For instance, a digital recruitment process requires an applicant tracking system. If your business manually manages this process, then it is not possible to benefit from process mining.  

Further reading

Learn more on process mining use cases and applications in different sectors, check out our other articles:

• 33 Use Cases / Applications of Process Mining
• Process Mining in Logistics: Guide to Benefits & Challenges
• Process Mining in Education: Use cases, Benefits & Challenges

Who are the technology providers?

More companies acknowledge the importance of process mining in human resources and provide solutions. Choosing a vendor and making sure the tool fits your needs is not a simple task. However, you can check our data-driven process mining software list to identify a short list of vendors and save time.

If you believe you need guidance to apply process-mining in HR, let us help you to find the right vendor: