Document Management and Your HR Team: How to Get Started

Picture an HR office. What do you see? Does your mental image include a lot of paper? If so, it may be time to consider your company’s document management options.

For many years, HR has been synonymous with paper. Forms to fill out, files to retain, and signatures to collect were all in a day’s work. In fact, it’s almost impossible to picture an HR office without stacks of paper.

Now, however, things are starting to change. More companies are seeing the economic and social value of going paperless. Paper demands are a strain on the environment, and employees in every sector waste many hours and dollars managing paper files. Armed with this knowledge, companies around the globe are ditching paper in favor of electronic document management. It may seem like a tall order to eliminate paper for HR document management, but innovative tools make it not only a possibility but the best possible choice.

Here are just a few of the things you can do so that electronic content management can help your HR department thrive.

Before you begin generating any new documents, you’ll need to sort out your old ones. This means finding paperless solutions to convert your current masses of paper into usable electronic documents. The idea of scanning all those documents is enough to make some business owners hesitate. Can you really afford to spend all of that time working through your old documents?

Absolutely! That’s because HR document management platforms make the work simple. They use scanning programs to enter all your current data quickly and without disrupting your day-to-day operations. This means that once you get started with your new content management platform, you can start benefiting from it right away.

Additionally, when your documents enter the system, automated indexing software scans them and immediately adds them to your indexed database. Consequently, your scanned data is immediately accessible with a quick search while also being entirely secure. Since you no longer have to waste time searching for the right document, you can put your time to better use instead. Your HR department will likely save the most time, as HR departments generally deal with the most paper.

The process of acquiring physical signatures can be arduous and insecure. Printing classified documents to sign and then returning them, regardless of method, puts all parties in potentially compromised positions. This often results in an HR nightmare. If there’s any department that absolutely needs document security, it’s the HR department.

Up until recently, though, there wasn’t much you could do about that insecurity. Team members simply had to be as careful as possible while transporting documents from one place to the next. Even so, accidents happen, so when a better system became available, a lot of business owners made the switch to digital document management.

If you have the right content management system, you can support electronic signatures. Signers can access digital documents through the same cloud-based software that you use to create those documents. The documents stay in the cloud and require no printers, pens, or wasted time.

In contrast to a paper-based system, electronic signatures offer complete security while cutting down on waste and turnaround time. Onboarding, enrollment, and other essential HR documents are immediately available and searchable without the headache of physical files and potential breach of confidentiality.

Imagine how much money and time is spent on paper forms alone. We already mentioned a couple of ways that your office may be wasting money on paper documents, but there are others. For instance, how much money does your business spend on printer ink? What about the time that gets wasted when your team members have to work around office clutter?

The amount is staggering, but HR document management offers a much better option. Distributing PDFs for company information and turning to e-forms for HR documentation are excellent alternatives for those piles of paper. PDFs are mobile-friendly and can be easily shared, protected, and edited as needed. E-forms are no longer complicated to build, either. Instead, evaluations, onboarding, applications, requests, and agreements can all reside in the cloud, and submissions will roll in in record time.

PDFs and e-forms can take a lot of pressure off your HR team. Once they no longer have to deal with all that physical paper, they’ll get some extra room to breathe, and as a result, the HR office can become more productive.

Ultimately, no paperless solutions will work unless your team is onboard. Fortunately, all of the benefits of digital content management can help you convince your team fast, and your HR department can help you extol those benefits.

When you implement HR document management, the best tool you have is team training. HR departments are influencers in their companies, so training them on the benefits of a paperless office will smooth your company-wide adoption of new software. Additionally, with the rise of environmental awareness, educating your staff about the eco-friendliness of a paperless office increases their enthusiasm.

Remember that you don’t have to change your entire system all at once. Because cloud-based software is scalable, a lot of business owners choose to go paperless one department at a time. Your HR department is a great place to start. One of the benefits of document management is that it lends itself well to HR departments. Once you’ve trained your HR team on your digital document platform, getting the rest of the office onboard should be simple.

HR departments across the country use massive amounts of paper each year. This reliance on paper causes inefficiencies, questionable security, and higher overhead costs. At the same time, certain HR document management platforms offer tools to make your HR department almost entirely paper-free. Why not take advantage of these superior document management systems? One of the best platforms comes from Vasion. Want to learn more? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us now to get started. Our team is here to help.