It...was intended for those things. Excel is modern business' multi-tool. You're not going to excise it until there is a solution for the HR person to do basic bulk data processing, basic Excel programming without having to acknowledge they are doing programming, etc.

The other path is better spreadsheet software, but let's be honest most of the others are poor clones. Gsheets are nearly useless, only office is solid but...well, it's just Excel but free. Open office is Excel millennium edition and libre while better than open, and has a few nice quality of life improvements, it's still Excel.