The benefits of digitizing your HR workflow

Human Resources (HR) has always been at the center of employee activity, from recruitment, performance appraisals, and onboarding, to payroll and career development.   

Top HR teams know that securing talent today is as challenging as securing new clients. Getting offer letters out quickly reduces the chance of losing a great candidate to another company. But that's only the first step. The employee onboarding experience is as important as the customer experience, from first interactions through to the offer letter. 

HR leaders have the opportunity to revolutionize the employee experience and shift organizations toward a digital-first mindset. Doing so can improve the HR workflow and drive organizational competitiveness and success.

HR and the problem of the partially automated process  

To fully take advantage of the benefits of an HR workflow automation process, it requires HR teams to rethink the approach to obtaining signatures. Before digitizing documents became part of the HR workflow, the volume of documents an HR department managed was truly overwhelming. From NDAs, new hire forms, and employee policy distribution, to performance appraisals and employee insurance forms — the amount of paperwork coming out of HR was massive.   

HR departments today might not be drowning in a sea of printouts, but there's still room for improvement. The process of digitizing documents took two forms: implementing eSignature solutions or manually scanning signed documents so the digital version could be properly cataloged. Both approaches, however, presented unique challenges. Manually scanning documents wastes valuable time and resources. In fact, one global company spent $900,000 in one year on scanning and imaging paper files back into their electronic system.

And some of the eSignature solutions lack certain necessary compliance and security criteria, creating a siloed HR tech stack.  

Streamlining processes is more important than ever to reduce time spent on residual manual processes and eliminate costly compliance or inefficiency errors. 

Introducing HR workflow automation with end-to-end digitization helps HR teams become more productive, and improves auditability and regulatory compliance. As a result, HR can focus on value-added activities such as attracting top talent, onboarding new hires faster, and improving the employee experience.   

How end-to-end digitization impacts HR goals

At a strategic level, end-to-end digitization of HR processes has a significant impact on key organizational goals. These include:

• Elevating the employee experience: HR leaders strongly believe that creating a memorable employee experience mirrors their best customer experience. This has led many HR organizations to offer a fully digital employee onboarding experience, among other digital workflows. 
• Enabling remote workforces: Electronic processes enable streamlined workflows regardless of device or location. Many organizations are turning to mobile technologies to create a culture of empowerment, where employees can make decisions and move projects forward from anywhere.   
• Improving productivity: A fully digitized process reduces processing times. This enables HR staff to apply their expertise where it matters (i.e., boosting morale and productivity) instead of spending time on various administrative tasks.  
• Facilitating compliance: HR process automation can enforce workflow rules to eliminate common errors like missing documents, pages, or signatures. In addition, digital processes provide visibility into the status of the signing process, with a full audit trail of each signer’s actions to demonstrate compliance. 

How digitizing your HR department adds value  

From recruiting and onboarding to performance management, today’s leading HR organizations are improving HR workflows by digitizing and securing every step of the employee lifecycle to achieve increased productivity, convenience, and cost-efficiency.  

Doing so offers a variety of benefits: 

• Speed up new hire processing time. With eSignatures embedded directly into the digital experience in various HR apps, such as Workday, organizations can more effectively meet applicable regulatory compliance requirements.
• Improve data quality and the end-to-end workflow. Modernize the digital signing process by leveraging mobile-friendly smart forms. 
• Offer a high-touch, personalized digital engagement experience. Guide candidates or employees through hiring documents in a secure virtual room. 

Additionally, by enabling strong security and authentication for mobile engagement, you can defend against the latest security threats and protect sensitive information from landing in the wrong hands.

HR workflow automation success stories

Many organizations are reaping the benefits of transforming key processes across their company. Here are a few use cases demonstrating how HR departments have impacted their business by using OneSpan solutions:  

• One global logistics company is using OneSpan Sign across more than 70 countries. In 2020, the company benefited from esignature for hiring its 90,000 seasonal temp employees. This ensured that all paperwork was completed before workers entered the site. 
• OneSpan Sign helped a US federal agency cut the turnaround time for annual performance reviews by 70%. Doing so helped reduce processing times from three months to an average of 27 days. 
• Integrating eSignature provided HR platform Akyla with a competitive edge. That solved the time-consuming problem of signing thousands of paper contracts, accelerated the onboarding process, and helped new hires become productive faster. 

Improving your HR workflow starts with a strong digital strategy. Learn more about OneSpan for HR.

Video

OneSpan Sign for Workday

In this demo video, we'll show you how to initiate a request for eSignature in Workday. OneSpan Sign manages the signing process and automatically stores signed records in Workday, so you don't have to. 

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