The Human Resources (HR) department oversees employment in an organization, but HR also plays a cross-departmental role. HR collaborates with accounting and finance for salaries and employee benefits, with the legal department for compliance issues and conflict resolution, and senior business managers for corporate policies around training and knowledge management.
Apart from the internal needs of the company, HR controls compliance requirements too.
We live in an era of high corporate regulation. Employee files are subject to audits, controls, and retention requirements. There is a direct impact on the entire company with such wide inter-dependence if the HR department hits hurdles.
Getting document management right in HR
Making the decision to go paperless is a big first step. But it’s important to note that converting paper documents into digital files only takes care of half of the problem. Digital files free up physical storage space and reduce HR’s burden of meeting internal needs and compliances—a huge difference that will be positively felt company-wide. Digital files also make files accessible for remote employees. In today’s world, that portability is important! However, switching from paper to digital files is not enough to solve all of HR’s challenges. An efficient system to manage those digital files is essential.
Loading digital files into an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), satisifies HR legal compliance requirements and makes access for managers, executives, supervisors, and other management staff easy. But that’s step two. In this article, we are focussing on step one: document capture.
Start with the basics: Digitize employee files.
Are all your employee records in digital format? Even your old records? One study revealed that 74% of organizations store employee documents as a mix of paper and digital formats.
Regulations oblige you to retain old records until their retention period. Have these inactive records been digitized? Probably not. Are your HR records geographically scattered—either in different cities or in various offices?. Are you confident you have control over physical copies circulated to multiple offices?
Here are some of the reasons why digitizing all HR files must be your priority for HR:
Digitizing employee files helps HR use time more efficiently:
Let’s admit it—HR departments are frequently understaffed. A few HR personnel cater to large numbers of employees in growing organizations, and HR is the last priority for additional staffing. So, you always find HR managers trying to make the most of the limited resources they have. Studies reveal that a typical HR worker wastes about 30-40% of their time looking for paper documents, files, and emails. When all files are available in an organized and structured digital format, the HR team’s output increases dramatically.
Control document flow:
Sometimes, HR shares files within the organization are spread out—whether this is across countries or down the street doesn’t matter. About 17% of organizations store their employee files in multiple offices around the country/world.
The point to note is that paper files move around, which poses a challenge in monitoring and controlling information flow. Scanning all of these scattered documents into digital files makes it easy to centralize all digital assets on a server or in the Cloud. This action solves the first problem: scattered to centralized. HR knows where everything is—hooray! But indexing would go a long way in cutting down the time required to find one file in that massive central repository. That’s why many companies decide to manage digital records with a document management system (DMS). A DMS makes it easy to find and transfer them electronically across geographies or with different offices.
Access and security:
Several people across departments access employee files. HR staff also shares these with external agencies like government bodies, auditors, and lawyers in case of legal issues. With paper files, HR makes physical copies of these documents while retaining the original documents. How does HR track the whereabouts of these copies? They may be shared further with other entities or end up in places where HR no longer controls their distribution. Security breaches are common in these situations. Employee information is highly sensitive, and data leaks are expensive for the organization. Step one is to make sure cybersecurity measures are up to spec. That means tasking your IT department (or outsourced Managed Service Provider) with putting firewalls, VPNs, and access protocols in place to protect your new digital vault. It makes sense at this stage to consider an efficient content management system that offers you complete control over digital files, with tight access control and document security protocols.
Comprehensive and updated information:
With paper files, it is difficult to ascertain if employee records are updated and complete. HR staff may remove a document from its original file and forget to return it to the file. Missing employee records are bad news for the organization, and awkward situations arise during audits if records are not updated. Worse still, lost documents lead to penalties and damages in the event of a lawsuit. These omissions become more obvious in a digital landscape. With an electronic document management system, all required data, past and present, is available in the system at all times.
Comply with retention policies:
Each document type has a specific retention schedule. The retention period of some records ends with an employee’s termination; others have different triggers for expiration. Paper documents tend to remain in storage way past their retention period. Frequently, records of terminated employees are shipped off-site for storage and forgotten—a waste of resources in both cases. Digitization in HR makes retention policies easier to track. A digital system automatically flags records for deletion and is pre-configured to delete expired records automatically.
Why does HR lag behind other departments in digitizing employee files?
According to a survey by Access, as few as 12% of organizations surveyed stored all employee files electronically. And only 4% of HR departments are entirely digitized! About 4% of organizations store inactive employee files in paper format, digitizng only active employee records.
So what do you think is the number one reason why companies don’t go paperless? Some studies suggest that lack of management initiatives is one of the main reasons—there is no one to lead the way!
The AMI approach to going paperless
Businesses now realize that digital is the more efficient and cost-effective way to manage information. But switching to paperless takes time and effort and must be approached systematically.
Before scanning your paper documents:
- Organize which documents you want to retain.
- Determine how you want your documents indexed and organized for easy retrieval.
- Finalize the expiration date or expiration criteria for the records as per your retention policy.
- Shred what is not needed.
Scanners capture information from paper documents and convert that information into digital files. We always suggest adding document management as a necessary second step to document capture. AMI offers OnBase, Human Capital Management (HCM) software to manage the employee life-cycle.
Digitize HR with AMI high-production scanning
Scan decades of backlogged records and incoming paper documents at the same time on a schedule we work out together.
AMI has the facilities and the expertise to handle large corporate scanning projects. Every project is different, so we ask questions to understand your needs before we start. Expert technicians trained and experienced in scanning and conversion services lead our team. They prepare the images and index them appropriately for seamless import into your system.
We scan all media types, including oversized paper documents, large-format drawings, microfilm, microfiche, and books, making sure we leave no stone unturned in your digital transformation initiative.
Is your HR department all set to go digital? Contact us for a free quote.