If you’ve ever worked at a small company or owned a business, you know the pain of drafting new contracts, forms, and policy documents. It’s work that has to be done, even though you’d rather be spending time on other things. Even for human resources professionals, drafting the same documents and printing them over and over again is tedious. There is a better way to spend your time. With the right HR document management platform, templates, forms, and policy documents can be automated. They can sit in digital libraries where people in the organization who need them can access them as necessary. In addition, e-forms can easily be routed to employees via digital workflows, and can be signed using e-signatures. Even old forms and policy documents can be scanned into a digital HR management platform. Here’s how automating HR documents helps organizations save time and work more productively.

Standardized Templates Help Improve Efficiency

Not only does having stored templates and other documents save time because you don’t have to write them over and over again, but they also improve efficiency in other ways. Work gets done faster and smarter because standardized documents keep everyone on the same page. This is especially important as your organization grows. As a result, when everyone knows the policies and structure of contracts in an HR document management platform, there is less confusion. People know what to tell colleagues and customers. There’s no need for “let me get back to you” when customers ask questions about terms.

E-Forms

When it comes to human resources, there are so many employee forms that must be organized, distributed, and collected. HR professionals deal with everything from new hire paperwork to retirement forms and much more! It can be overwhelming to store all these paper forms inside the office. Having automated e-forms not only saves space, but it also saves time. Custom e-forms are easy to create. Understanding computer coding isn’t necessary; simply drag and drop form elements to create the end product. These e-forms can easily be routed into digital workflows so that your employees can get access to them immediately. This automated system saves so much time and prevents the loss of paperwork from all the back-and-forth. In addition, your company will save a lot of money on printing costs.

Automated Workflow 

HR professionals can save a lot of time through automated workflows. These workflows include a plethora of detailed information so that everyone involved knows exactly what they should do. Here’s what’s included in each workflow:

• Workflow Name
• Initial Status (ex: pending approval)
• Approved Destination
• Priority
• Form
• Workflow Steps (includes step name, step type, and recipient)

The workflows also contain advanced options, like including admin on all steps or auto approving documents. In addition, there is a section for email options where users can select an email to be sent when the workflow step is complete. This organized process helps everyone involved to be more productive. 

Sounds organized, right? But how does this automated workflow help HR save time? Think about it from the perspective of new hire paperwork. HR starts a workflow and assigns it to the new employee. It includes the necessary paperwork forms that everyone must complete upon starting their job. The priority is set as “high,” so the new employee knows they need to get this done ASAP. Once the new hire completes the forms, HR is automatically notified. The e-forms can be saved via the content management system so that they can easily be pulled up in the future if needed. Think how much time was saved. No back-and-forth phone calls or emails between HR and the employee. No printing page after page of forms. There’s also no risk of a form getting lost since everything is stored digitally in one place. 

E-Signature 

All these digital forms and workflows sound great, but what about a good old-fashioned signature? Fortunately, a good HR document management platform has a solution: employees can sign documents digitally. Digital signatures are encrypted for security. They are in compliance with the e-Sign act and UETA Act, so they are legally binding just like a physical signature would be. 

Fewer Policy Mistakes Avoid Trouble

HR is all about policies! When policy is clear, there is less room for mistakes. Putting out fires and dealing with legal issues is a huge part of HR professionals’ time. Many smaller companies struggle with mistakes because there is a lack of clarity. People aren’t held to the same standard, so there’s more chance for mix-ups to happen. Clear policies stored in an HR document management system keep everyone accountable. These policy documents are stored digitally and managed across different platforms, like Google Drive and OneDrive. Through the HR document management platform, policy documents are easily accessible and can be referenced at any time. This is a much better process than employees having to dig through their desk or binders looking for a particular HR paper they were given years ago. 

What About Old Paper Documents? 

Save time and space by converting old paper forms and policy documents to digital documents. With an HR digital document management platform, old papers can be scanned in and saved digitally. Instead of digging through file cabinets each time someone needs an old document, HR employees can now easily pull up information digitally.

Choosing an HR Document Management Platform

When you’re looking for an HR document management option, you want to find something that’s scalable and easy to use. You want to be able to keep the same system throughout your organization’s growth. The best software options can adapt to your company’s needs based on employee numbers and the amount of business you do. HR document management platforms need to be intuitive, so every employee is comfortable navigating them and viewing HR documents.

Vasion specializes in helping organizations automate document creation and processing. We offer software solutions that help save time and money. You and your employees will spend more time driving growth and making an impact. Contact us today to hear how we can help.