Six Key Benefits of Document Management for HR

Efficient management of company employees relies on many HR activities crucial to your business:

• Recruiting and screening of applicants
• Timely and effective communications with management and employees at every level
• Accurate record-keeping for legal requirements and compliance
• Access to current information, both within HR and by employees

In the past, most of these functions involved paper documents, phone calls, mailing, copying, and repeated filing and retrieval of information. Your HR personnel have more important things to do than handling and re-handling paper documents. Shouldn’t they be more focused on dealing with and assisting your employees?

ECM to the Rescue for HR Departments

Document management has now matured into sophisticated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems that simplify and streamline many processes for HR teams.

Top benefits of ECM systems for HR teams include:

1. Increased efficiency

Resumes, applications, and forms associated with new employees are stored in digital format, and can easily be searched and organized into meaningful folders. This facilitates future reference and routing to the right resource for further action. Printing, copying, mailing, and filing are eliminated, and no documents are lost or misplaced.

Employees needing information related to their HR records can be enabled with access to such information electronically, with only the information you designate being viewable. This eliminates many phone calls or emailed requests to HR employees, freeing them for other important tasks.

2. Workflow

Not only can applications be automatically routed to the right person for review and consideration, but once offers of employment are offered and accepted, the necessary paperwork can all be done electronically. This streamlines onboarding and improves efficiency.

Documents that require multiple reviews and approvals can be distributed electronically, ensuring that the right person gets the right forms and documents with the speed and accuracy of a digital workflow that you customize to suit your needs.

3. Security and confidentiality are assured

By establishing roles and access rules within the ECM system, only authorized personnel can create, view, update, or print documents. This ensures compliance with such regulations as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, and more.

4. Automation of routine processes

Managing requests for vacations, personal time off, and other routine processes can be transitioned to ECM functions that are routed automatically to the right manager for approval. This can be done from any workstation or device, simplifying the process for employees, managers, and HR.

5. Retention and accuracy

Electronic documents are stored on servers or in the cloud, and retained to meet all records retention requirements. They will never be lost or damaged, and are easily searched and retrieved when needed.

No more need to keep adding file cabinets or storage areas for document archives, and no time spent filing paper documents.

Electronic records make tracking of employee benefits, reviews, promotions, training, and certifications a snap, with immediate access to consistent and reliable information. This is usable for future advancement consideration, or even when events arise such as eligibility for unemployment or disability claims.

6. Focus on business-critical efforts

It’s much more valuable to your business that HR personnel are involved in employee sourcing, retention, and development. Spending time on managing paper is not an effective return on your HR investment. ECM systems will allow you to leverage HR teams to concentrate on people, not paper.

How Do You Get Started?

Electronic document management is now a mature technology that can benefit your business in a short timeframe. Most businesses implementing such systems report a payback in less than 18 months, and often in 12 months or less.

To get moving toward HR ECM adoption, there are a few key decisions to be made:

• Which ECM system will best suit your company, not just for HR, but for other departments, as you discover all the benefits of electronic document management
• How will you migrate to electronic documents: only from the day you implement, converting paper to electronic form only as they are needed for reference, or taking the plunge and scanning all paper records into the system (over time). This may be dependent on the actual volume of documents you have in your archives.
• In-house or in the cloud? Storing data on IT servers can increase the cost and possibly make growth more complex. Many businesses choose to implement ECM on cloud-based systems, to provide 24/7 access for mobile or global employees and managers.

Kelley Connect – HR Document Management Specialists

To be successful, transitioning to an ECM system for HR professionals requires careful planning, definition of requirements and expectations, and appropriate training. Working with a company such as Kelley Connect that has the experience and proven track record of success in ECM implementations provides confidence in the results and the return on investment your project will achieve.

Kelley Connect professionals are ready to help take your HR department into the digital age. Call us today for a complimentary consultation and personalized demo of how ECM can benefit your HR organization.