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Over time, irrespective of the industry they operate in, the needs of employees have changed significantly. In 2021, the engagement of your employees is no longer limited to the remuneration they receive and the position they hold in the company. Today, employees demand personalized support and flexibility at work to feel more engaged with their organization. 

Moreover, the increasing trend of working remotely has only added to the new employees needs to be taken care by the HR department. This has resulted in the need to revamp the HR help desk for providing streamlined support to the employees. 

The traditional HR help desk can no longer be used to assist your employees and ensure their well-being. The support provided by the traditional help desks is more generic in nature with unnecessary delays. Whether the employees want to resolve their issues or obtain specific information from the HR department, the traditional help desks seldom provide organized support. 

This led to the management and employees facing a plethora of problems arising from the older and more traditional help desk tools. Here are some of the biggest challenges faced by HR help desks today in providing adequate support to the employees: 

1. Onboarding Remote Employees
   
   One of the biggest challenges faced by the HR department in using the HR help desk is that of onboarding remote employees. As more and more employees have started working from their homes, there is a lack of personal touch and physical interaction with the management. This makes it difficult for the HR managers to ensure that the new employees are provided with all relevant resources when they join the company.
   
   Moreover, remote working has made it difficult for HR professionals to ascertain how engaged the new employees are. In 2021, it is essential to onboard employees to be comfortable working with their new team members and reach an optimum level of comfort while doing their job. Virtual interactions often make it difficult for the HR department to ensure full engagement of the new employees.
   
   
2. Difficulties In User Adoption
   
   Despite all the benefits offered by HR help desks, organizations often face difficulties getting their employees to adopt the platform effectively. According to a survey by PWC, eight out of ten organizations face difficulties in the user adoption of their HR help desks.
   
   If your employees are provided with a help desk that is complicated to operate, they would prefer using the more traditional approach to obtaining HR assistance, such as making calls and sending emails. This reduces the value an HR help desk offers to the employees and the management in streamlining the support services.
   
   If your employees struggle with adapting to their HR help desk, it is always advisable to switch to a simple platform and effective in its approach.
   
   
3. High Dependence On Agents
   
   Many HR help desks depend a lot on the support agents to assist the employees. The traditional help desks still require agents to manually track, allocate, and assign the tickets, resulting in unwanted delays in employee support.
   
   HR help desks often place the support agents in the first level of support, resulting in all the cases being routed to them for essential assistance. When the agents are overburdened with cases, it becomes difficult to provide quick and personalized support to employees. This makes the overall support process slow and tedious.
   
   Moreover, if the HR help desk is complicated to use and the agents are not trained well to operate the same, it affects the quality of support provided to the employees. When you cannot provide adequate support to your employees, it directly affects their productivity, engagement, and retention.
   
   
4. Lack Of A Consistent Platform
   
   Many HR help desks follow a fragmented approach to provide support to the employees. The lack of a single consistent platform leads to employees seeking support using different channels. The experience of obtaining support via chats, phone calls, and emails is different and inconsistent. When your HR help desk does not provide your employees with a single unified platform, it reduces the overall effectiveness and value-added support.
   
   
5. Lack Of Valuable Insights And Platform Scalability
   
   Another common issue involved with implementing a traditional HR help desk is a lack of valuable insights. Along with providing seamless support to the employees, an organization needs to track the support processes and ascertain their effectiveness. When the HR managers analyze the response to their support processes and how well the platform has fared in assisting the employees, they can significantly improve their approach.
   
   Unfortunately, the traditional HR service desks do not allow the managers to measure the effectiveness of their processes and obtain valuable insights about the same. This often makes them ignorant about the issues faced by the employees unless specifically addressed to them.
   
   

Resolving The Challenges Through HR Help Desk Automation

The challenges discussed above can be resolved by automating your HR help desk. The modern help desks provide your employees with personalized support that is quick and precise. They help your HR managers and your employees automate many processes that help you streamline your HR activities.

HR help desk automation offers benefits to your employees as well as your HR professionals. While your employees can get their issues resolved within a few seconds, your HR professionals can reach out to your employees and keep track of their processes on a centralized platform.

Here are some of the crucial ways in which HR help desk automation helps you tackle the challenges listed above: 

1. Automated Onboarding Of Remote Employees
   
   A modern HR help desk allows your HR managers to automate onboarding the employees working remotely. As the new employees join your organization, the help desks allow you to send automated emails to them with all necessary resources. These personalized emails can contain the login credentials of your employees, the company policies, contact details of their team members, access to specific software tools, and all other details vital for them to start their work effectively.
   
   Moreover, personalized onboarding emails can be used to educate the new employees about their roles and responsibilities. This helps them clearly understand the tasks they are required to perform and get rid of all confusion.
   
   
2. Easy Integration With Collaborative Platforms
   
   In order to simplify the support obtained by the employees and provided by the HR professionals, a modern HR help desk can be integrated with a collaborative platform. This provides your organization with a single unified platform for streamlining all your HR processes.
   
   Integration of your HR help desk with a collaborative platform helps your employees work and resolve their issues on the same platform. This helps them save time that would have otherwise been wasted on looking for help through different channels. The integration also helps your HR managers approach every employee through a centralized platform, irrespective of the department they work in.
   
   
3. Replacing Agents With AI Chatbots
   
   The excessive dependence of agents can be reduced by replacing them with AI chatbots in the first level of support. Instead of approaching the agents directly, an automated HR help desk allows your employees to interact with virtual assistants who answer the fundamental questions instantly. When a question is asked, the AI chatbots scout your knowledge base and return with the most suitable answer for the concerned employee within a few seconds.
   
   However, the use of AI-driven virtual assistants does not eliminate the involvement of support agents. If your employee needs more insight into their issue, they can get their case routed to the agents simply by chatting with the chatbots. As the agents are no longer overburdened with cases, they can address every issue with personalized attention and revert to the employees via chatbots.
   
   
4. Simplified Resolution Of Cases Through Automated Ticketing
   
   HR help desk automation allows your employees to auto-resolve their issues by automating the ticketing process. The modern help desks help your employees create support tickets by initiating a chat with the chatbots. This would make the help desk create a ticket and send all relevant information about the case to a suitable support agent.
   
   As the issue is resolved, the help desk would send automated notifications to the concerned employees to keep them updated about their cases. When the issue is resolved, the HR help desk would automatically close the ticket and record the case details to help the management make essential assessments.
   
   

The Final Word 

These were some of the significant challenges faced by an HR help desk and how they can be tackled. HR help desk automation is the need of the hour, and it is always advisable to migrate from the traditional help desk to streamline the support provided to your employees.