Member Article

The five steps to paperless HR efficiency

When you think about it paper clogs up a lot of key HR processes. EASY Software’s Howard Frear explains the best way to speed up all this work, achieve the cost benefits of self-service as well as a belt and braces approach to data protection

Human capital is just as important as sales when it comes to making an organisation successful. But in this day and age, working off dead trees to manage that human capital is not the way to go. So here’s how to get to a paper-light HR office in five steps.

First, HR people need to communicate a great deal. That’s internally to management and externally to candidates in the talent pool. There’s a huge amount of paper flow at the commencement of the employment process that you really need to get right. Look to get as much off paper and into a safe HR platform you can trust from day one, as that’s the best way to form a solid foundation for a digital HR system. Note, we say paper-lite as it may not be realistic to want to aim for 100% digital – which is fine, so long as the commitment isn’t to remaining 100% paper by contrast.

Second, on-boarding of a new employee is a critical time for you and the candidate. The terms have to be right, the offer has to be what the hiring manager needs, and promises are made (by both sides, e.g. if there’s an issue with a claim on the CV like a qualification that they don’t possess, or some lack of clarity about the job role, the expected compensation, non-standard elements of the package added on to secure this person etc.), which need to be properly recorded. Again, paper is a cumbersome way of working when managing all this complexity.

Thirdly, now your new joiner is on board and inducted, they need proper attention. That’s to say, all the benefits, perks, pension arrangements, holiday and leave processes, expense forms, travel arrangements and so on need to be made available. It’s been estimated that across the lifecycle of a typical employee that can add up to 120 separate processes. It’s just not realistic to see your job as the holder of all that paper on their behalf, waiting to distribute it to them – you need a portal or intranet that makes all this information safely and easily available to them as bits and bytes.

Fourthly, it’s just a fact of life that not all employer-employee relationships work out. There are disputes, disciplinary issues, infractions – even industrial tribunals, regrettably. This whole side of employment is a thicket of legal and data protection issues that you have to handle with the greatest of care and attention. Big workflows such as disciplinary procedures are ideally handled in a digital medium, or organisations may end up struggling (vital evidence lost or misplaced, say), which at its most nightmarish could risk a penalty from the ICO.

Finally, when a team member leaves, you will need to keep their details – but only for a legally set period of time, thanks to various compliance and data protection issues that you are probably aware of. The point is that keeping day-by-day track of when to dispose of these records is a bit of admin you can easily automate, and it’s a process managed far better by computer than by filing cabinet.

To sum up, HR teams will be relieved to know there is a way out of the paper chase. It doesn’t have to be a 100% overnight transition, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a door labelled ‘Efficiency’ that you shouldn’t be pushing open. The good news is that when you do, your job becomes more about value-add than chasing paper, and you can also be reassured that your organisation is best-protected against any blowback from any employee dispute or data protection legalities.

Document Management technology can help the HR team in powerful and important ways. Greater efficiency and vital risk management are the order of the day, so now is the time to start the move towards a paperless future.

The author is sales and marketing director for EASY Software (UK) plc, Europe’s foremost provider of integrated document management technologies

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Howard Frear .