Scanning Services for HR: Digitize recruitment, onboarding & training documents

HR's primary role and responsibility in an organization focuses on nurturing human assets through culture development, optimizing productivity and teamwork, and engaging employees through learning initiatives. Unfortunately, the reality is that most HR functions are weighed down with administrative tasks that are manual, labor-intensive, and time-consuming—with little or no time left for pure talent development and nurturing.

Document digitization is the first step that HR departments must take to digitally transform processes around recruitment, onboarding and training of employees—all of which are all highly document-dependent.

Start with document scanning across all HR processes 

Every document-intensive process in HR, whether it is for recruitment, onboarding, training, and separation, can benefit from digitization. Start with the early stages of the employee lifecycle: scanning employee documents like resumes, job applications, educational certificates, and previous work references is the first step you can take to start your HR department's digital transformation journey.

Hiring and selection of new hires: Scan and manage documents digitally 

Hiring usually involves scores of physical and digital resumes, job applications and other documents coming into the HR department. Managing multiple job descriptions, reviewing application documents and assessing applicants are time-consuming activities. All resumes, interview transcripts, reference letters of previous employers, and educational certificates are valuable and confidential documents. The hiring team is responsible for verifying all original papers and eventually returning them to the employees. 

At this point, add a step to ensure that all these critical documents are scanned and securely stored for future requirements like inquiries, promotions or separation. While your HR teams may have a desktop scanner, it is best to collaborate with an experienced and reputed scanning services provider for a systematic, real-time document digitization process. Once digitized, store the documents in a  DMS to streamline the processing further. A DMS can automatically capture, sort, and distribute job applications, routing them to the necessary HR team members and saving time sorting through stacks of paper resumes.

Switch to digitized onboarding processes

Once the selection process is complete, HR engages new hires in an elaborate onboarding process—and not surprisingly—there's even more documentation here! Starting with an offer acceptance letter, a tedious process of filling out forms and filing regulatory documents begins now. Introduce digitization at this step to save time and administrative effort while minimizing human error. When critical onboarding documents are digitized, onboarding is faster, and compliance with required federal paperwork is easier. 

Failure to comply with employee data regulations could subject your organization to penalties or even litigation.

Federal regulations stipulate which documents you must store or retain and for what period of time—this is known as a document retention schedule. Scanning onboarding documents or using digital data capture forms makes it easier to store confidential employee data securely and manage document retention schedules. 

A Document Management System (DMS) ensures that you can adhere to best practices for safely storing employee information during onboarding. Strict access control features prevent data loss or theft and due to unauthorized access.

What you need is a software solution that incorporates digital forms, digital signatures, document management software, workflow automation, and access-from-anywhere Cloud storage, so your onboarding documents become indexed, searchable digital files. 

New hires can enter their personal information electronically and digitally sign offer acceptance documents when you digitize your onboarding processes. It creates a great first impression for the new hire joining your company! Plus, you'll never lose important documents as all digital files are backed up and stored securely.

Training: Digitize to improve employee engagement

In the typical employee lifecycle, onboarding is followed by regular employee training—a continuous process of learning and development that keeps employees career-focused and engaged with organizational goals and values. HR staff must track and update an employee's training status, send notifications to employees who need to start a new training. Electronic tracking and automatically informing employees of upcoming training will save time, administrative effort and leaves HR staff free to focus on more valuable work.

A content management system such as the OpenText Application Content Management can track the training needs of employees and update the status of the training attended. It can also send reminders for upcoming training and allow employees to apply for upskilling training required for their work roles.

Go a step beyond and engage an HR workflow automation system like ApplicationXtender to smooth out manual processes and free up your HR staff's time. 

Digitized workflows manage payroll information, leave requests, health benefits and other HR processes for employees working from disparate locations. With remote working gaining prominence, companies that provide a digital self-service HR solution for their employees are viewed as preferred employers! 

Don’t forget to digitize separation documents: All’s well that ends well!

Whether it is a lay-off, resignation, dismissal, or voluntary retirement, employee separation is inevitable in the employee management lifecycle. Keeping separation processes structured and efficient is as important as recruitment and onboarding of new hires. 

Digitization can simplify document-intensive separation processes. Employee release documents have to be signed, scanned, and stored securely for future queries and references.

A defined and structured policy for scanning all employee lifecycle documentation will prove to be transformative for your HR department.

RDS: Get ready for a changing HR landscape with scanning and data capture solutions

Over the last few years, the HR function has undergone rapid changes and transformation. The COVID-19 crisis accelerated digitization and led to a new, more data-driven workplace emerging. Remote teams now have to engage in collaborative work. HR teams themselves are facing the challenges of remote working. 

In such a scenario, scanning all HR documents as soon as they enter the organization is critical so that remote teams can access them seamlessly.

Maintaining, storing and accessing digitized documents is more efficient than handling paper. So the way forward for HR is clearly digital!

Contact RDS to recreate efficient HR workflows in your organization through document scanning and workflow automation.