How Workflow Automation Improves Employee Retention

Employee turnover is more than an expensive headache, it’s a full-blown migraine for companies. On average, replacing an employee can cost between six to nine months of their salary. For someone earning $50,000 annually, you’re looking at a $25,000 – $38,000 expense to recruit and train a replacement. If turnover is high, that payout skyrockets. Beyond the financial hit, productivity takes a nosedive, morale suffers, and team dynamics falter. 

Sure, retaining employees is good for business, but it’s also the foundation for a thriving workplace. Workflow automation offers a powerful way to enhance employee experiences, reduce frustrations, and strengthen retention. Let’s explore how it works and ways your business benefits.

The Cost of Turnover and Poor Retention

Financial Strain

Hiring isn’t cheap. Every time an employee leaves, the recruitment process kicks into gear: job postings, interviews, background checks, onboarding, and training. While these are necessary processes, they devour time and resources. For small and mid-sized businesses, this can snowball into a critical budget issue.

Productivity Pitfalls

When someone exits, their workload doesn’t magically disappear. The remaining team members scramble to pick up the slack, often leading to burnout. Projects stall, deadlines slip, and overall productivity dips dramatically.

Cultural Impact

Turnover affects more than just workflows—it impacts people. Employees notice when colleagues leave, and high turnover creates an unstable revolving door effect. Inevitably, trust erodes and team unity falters. Strong workplace cultures rely on consistency, stability, and collaboration, all of which turnover disrupts.

Ways Workflow Automation Boosts Retention

Boosted Employee Engagement

Imagine every new hire receiving exactly what they need to grow and thrive, without adding hours to your HR team’s workload. Workflow automation, powered by seamless data integrations, makes this possible.

For example, Flexspring can integrate an ATS with other HR systems to automatically update onboarding for new hires. Once a candidate is hired, their information quickly transfers to core HR systems, payroll, and software sign-on access. This speeds up onboarding and allows new employees to contribute to the organization right out of the gate.

A global tech management firm experienced the benefits firsthand. “Before this integration,” the company’s payroll specialist said, “we would enter prospective employees into two systems where they would sit idle in prospect status. Now, once we enter a candidate in SAP, that data flows into ADP automatically. Another team member just has to push a button to complete the hiring process. Employee data goes from one spot to everywhere we need them to exist. Integration eliminated the duplicate entry tasks we did before, saving us valuable time.”

Automated and custom-tailored onboarding experiences send a clear message: “We see you, and we value your journey here.” When employees feel recognized and supported, loyalty follows, and they’re more likely to stick around.

Crystal-Clear Communication

Small communication hiccups pile up over time and can turn the employee frustration dial up to eleven. And that can be costly. With data connectors, employee benefits selected in your ATS or Core HR system are automatically sent to your payroll app to calculate individual payroll benefit deductions. Should an employee make further changes to their benefit plans or changes occur due to life events (marriage, births, divorce), integration automatically shares the updates with your payroll app.

The time savings of automation increases productivity. Employees can easily find what they need without jumping through hoops. This reduces frustration and burnout, leaving them empowered and in control of their work day.

Stress-Free Efficiency

As every accounting department knows, payroll is more than just cutting checks. For instance, ERP integration takes the errors out of reconciling payroll. No more duplicate data input from your payroll system to your ERP. No more costly errors or wasted time. Payroll to journal entry integration does the heavy lifting. Data integration neatly packages every payroll run into a single, structured journal entry per subsidiary—complete with earnings, deductions, taxes, and other critical details. Need to customize how data is grouped? No problem. Whether by department, location, or any other criteria, integration adapts to fit business needs.

A major mortgage company’s finance team discovered the value of ERP integration firsthand. “The biggest pluses for us with our ADP to NetSuite integrations [New Hires and Payroll to Journal Entries] are that they save time and eliminate human error in data entry,” the corporate controller said. “Before, we needed one person dedicated to manually making changes and updates into NetSuite, which took them about 8 hours per week. Now we’re saving a day’s worth of time every week!”

With fewer errors to chase down and no more tedious data entry, payroll professionals can focus on higher-value tasks, leading to better job satisfaction and a smoother workflow. ERP integration ensures everything stays in sync. Smooth, efficient, and headache-free—just the way payroll should be.

Boosting ROI with Workflow Automation

Real Benefits You Can Measure

Investing in workflow automation delivers benefits that transform how your business operates. First, consider the financial gains: lower turnover means slashing costs for job ads, recruitment time, onboarding, and training. These savings go straight to your bottom line. Then, there’s the operational uplift. Automation replaces repetitive, time-consuming tasks so your team can focus on work that truly moves the needle. Imagine a workplace where disruptions are minimal, deadlines are met with ease, and your team has the bandwidth to innovate and excel. 

Sample Case

Automating manual tasks is critical to employee retention strategies. Nearly 80% of full-time employees surveyed said automation gives them more time to deepen customer relationships, take on challenging new projects, and learn new skills. Also, 90% say they feel more satisfied with their jobs since using automation technology.

In the cloud communications industry, for instance, picture a firm struggling to retain technical specialists due to a cumbersome hiring and onboarding process bogged down with manual data entry tasks. Hiring delays, payroll inaccuracies, and inefficiency frustrated new employees right from the start. For the HR team, the dreary task of inputting extensive details increased mistakes, tarnishing the entire process. Once the HR team adopted workflow automation to streamline hiring and onboarding, those tedious tasks were a thing of the past. Onboarding automation handled everything from benefits calculations to employee data updates. New hires are now ready to contribute from day one, and HR workers are free to work on more engaging projects. Everyone wins.

Steps to Implement Workflow Automation

Getting started with automation might sound intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how to approach it:

1. Identify Your Gaps
   Start with an audit. Look closely at your HR and operational processes. Which tasks are the most tedious? Are your manual repetitive tasks prone to errors? Where do errors frequently occur? Identifying manual and double-data entry bottlenecks sets the stage for meaningful change by pinpointing areas that could benefit from automation.
2. Choose the Right Tools
   Automation tools like ATS integration streamline your hiring and onboarding workflows, they don’t complicate them. Data integration connectors will help you integrate your existing systems seamlessly, so look for a company experienced at simplifying complex workflows. Integration ensures that you get the most out of your current HR and payroll apps.
3. Set Your Teams Up for Success
   Introduce automation with a focus on freeing your professionals. Provide clear training to help employees and HR teams understand how the tools work and how they’ll benefit. By framing automation as an enhancement to their experience, you’ll gain buy-in and excitement.

Conclusion

Workflow automation will transform your workplace into a thriving hub where employees feel supported, valued, and motivated. Automation strengthens engagement and loyalty by simplifying workflows, eliminating manual data headaches, and improving communication.

Ready to take the first step? Flexspring specializes in building seamless integrations that turn workflow hurdles into opportunities for growth. Explore how data connectors and automation can bolster retention and unlock your team’s potential today.