Efficiency in action: How our global HR team runs on our own eSignature software

As a global company, our HR team coordinates with employees and candidates worldwide. Part of the job is to get documents signed for compliance and legal purposes, protect sensitive data, and maintain secure records.

A few years back, we realized that paper-based processes were slowing down operations for everyone—from our HR staff to employees, prospective hires, and even partners and vendors. A simple example is candidates who did not have a printer, traveling an hour into the office and an hour back just to sign their offer letter. Stories like this elevated the importance of implementing a digital solution for OneSpan’s team to improve efficiencies and enhance the experience for everyone involved.

Enter our eSignature solution: OneSpan Sign for HR. Implementing it into our HR workflows transformed how we navigated the signature process, which ultimately enabled a better signing experience for all parties. OneSpan Sign for HR also allowed us to go paperless bringing the business greater productivity and efficiencies through automation.

Here’s a closer look at the challenges we faced within our HR department, the solution we implemented, and the results that followed.

The challenges: Resource constraints and paper-based processes

Across all sectors and company sizes, HR departments are bogged down with manual processes and overwhelmed with the vast amount of physical documents. From navigating offer letter signatures to ensuring employee documentation is stored securely, the HR team handles a lot, often without sufficient staff to cover the workload. OneSpan was no different.

Though the pandemic changed many things—including forcing organizations to explore digital agreement solutions to better navigate remote hiring processes—not all companies followed suit. In fact, many still require new hires to print, sign, and scan their signed offer letters.

Our HR team’s paper-based processes were not always the most efficient. In addition to various friction points for employees and candidates when it came time to sign documents, we also had multiple manual processes that introduced the risk of human error.

We needed to streamline our processes to increase the HR team’s efficiency. We also wanted to improve the employee experience, and we needed to do this without sacrificing security.

The solution: OneSpan Sign for HR

OneSpan Sign for HR is an eSignature solution that allows teams like mine to digitize their processes. By streamlining the HR workflow across hiring, onboarding, benefits management, and offboarding, we saw time and cost savings across the board, with an average of five minutes saved per signature request.

“When I started at OneSpan, we had been using OneSpan Sign for most of our signatures in the U.S.,” said Abby Kehe, Global HR Operations Manager based in Chicago. “The more we socialized it internally and the more we used it, the more efficient we got. Saving time and manual effort for the HR team was where we saw the biggest efficiencies.”

To give you an example, Abby explained that, “The nice part about OneSpan Sign is the follow-up aspect. We know new hires have so much going on in their first few weeks; there’s a lot of paperwork. But with OneSpan Sign, it’s very easy for us in HR to click that reminder email rather than going to their desk or pinging them on Teams to ask them to fill out the paperwork. OneSpan Sign is just an easier way to stay on top of everything.”

She added, “The Fast Track feature in OneSpan Sign for HR allows publishing a PDF form for signing, making a real difference when the same forms repeatedly need to be signed. For example, we have a direct deposit form for US employees that they will update if they need to modify their bank account information. Rather than manually prepare and send each employee the form one by one, I created a template in OneSpan Sign and added the URL to the intranet, so I only need to send them the link for the form completion. It’s just one step, making it extremely easy, and the link can be used anytime in the future.”

Recognizing that each organization’s needs are different, and regional differences also impact HR teams, OneSpan Sign for HR is flexible, ensuring teams can meet their specific goals.

To do this, the solution is available in two ways: standalone and integration.

• Standalone cloud service: Implementing OneSpan Sign eSignatures into the HR operations workflow allows HR teams to leverage the digital signature solution to capture signatures faster while also reducing manual work.
• Integration: OneSpan Sign for HR easily integrates into existing HR tools, including Workday and Greenhouse. This allows teams to easily navigate hiring and onboarding processes while enhancing the digital experience. See how Workday eSignature streamlines HR processes.

The results: Better and faster

After implementing OneSpan Sign for HR, the benefits to our HR team were greater flexibility, better experiences for senders and signers, and significant time savings.

Flexibility

With global operations, we have unique geographical requirements that must be met. OneSpan Sign for HR gives our company the flexibility to meet local regulations, including the EU’s eIDAS Regulation, Switzerland’s ZertES, and the US’s ESIGN and UETA laws, without introducing new or more complex processes.

For example, in Belgium, our Legal team requires that HR and signers, whether candidates or employees, use qualified eSignatures. Because OneSpan Sign has an integration with itsme, our HR team can easily do this in the standalone OneSpan Sign service.

HR digital transformation

OneSpan Sign makes the entire digital signing process easy. Svitlana Horbach, HR Generalist based in Belgium, shared that signing an offer letter and completing new employment forms can be stressful for new hires and, as a result, they can sometimes miss a page.

“We would have to go back and ask them ‘Please, can you sign the other page?’ With OneSpan Sign, it’s less stressful. People know where to click. They just press a button and it’s signed. There’s no way to make a mistake,” she said.

Kai Chun Tam, HR Coordinator based in Montreal, echoed the value of digital transformation for HR by highlighting how it streamlines processes. “I use OneSpan Sign for new hire packages, offer letters and documentation. And we love the recipients signing order functionality. We can ensure that person A signs before person B, which ultimately prevents errors in cases where the HR representative has to sign before the employee, for example.”

Leveraging OneSpan Sign for HR also ensures that documents are digitally stored and employees and HR have access to all completed documents. It provides a digital audit trail for compliance and builds in bank-grade security to keep sensitive information secure.

Integration benefits

We started using the Workday integration and saw immediate benefits. Our US-based HR team is now sending offer letters to candidates faster without many of the unnecessary repeat steps we did in the past.

“Prior to setting up that integration, there were so many parts in our process where we were entering the same information in a few different places. We were pulling it from one system, putting it in Workday, then putting it in an offer letter. Now, with the OneSpan Sign integration for Workday, it just flows from system to system, to the offer letter and back,” said Abby.

“As a result, the user experience on our end has improved a lot. The streamlining has improved a lot. And the process of getting that offer letter out has significantly sped up,” she said. “The automatic archiving of signed documents is super helpful, too. It’s one less thing that we have to think about.”

We walk the talk

OneSpan for HR helped OneSpan streamline HR operations by removing the need for manual, time-intensive processes. The OneSpan HR team no longer needs to manually follow up and print, scan, and save documents. In most scenarios, the team saves about five to six minutes per transaction or request.

Embracing a paperless approach to HR documentation for onboarding and employee lifecycle also brings greater flexibility to the team. Leaning into automation enhances the user experience without sacrificing security and still facilitating compliance with regional regulations.

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