5 Ways Document Scanning Eases the Burden on Your HR Department

Are You “SCEER”ed?

It may be a misnomer to say that “document scanning eases the burden on your HR department,” because the benefits derive from much more than scanning. There are always costs associated with any department in an organization, but using less paper drives costs down while effectiveness rises, which makes for a more efficient department. HR, human resources, is a unique department engaged in many functions, ultimately intent upon supporting the company with their highest investment — their people.

The list of benefits can be broken down into five subcategories: Standards, Compliance, Efficiency, Employee Retention and Retrievability. (S.C.E.E.R.) There are several concrete benefits to present for each subcategory, which impact the bottom line.

Standards

One of the first steps in designing a scanning solution is to map out the flows of documents and information. This standardization develops onboarding processes that lead to more efficient employees out of the gate. Employees who are appropriately onboarded report higher levels of satisfaction and lower turnover rates because expectations and policies are made clear. In addition, equipment issuance, and IT administration can be fed into this workflow, which allows for an employee to actually start productive work on their first day. In addition, these guided and repeatable processes regarding performance reviews, personnel action forms and payroll changes ensure that employees are measured and managed fairly, and the documented processes can be useful in the case of a question about the handling of any employee issues. Transactional items from employees (like vacation requests) can also easily be incorporated into the HR files to show a comprehensive history for each employee.

Compliance

File management practices are easier to understand and implement, including several mandates specific to personnel records. (For instance, separating I-9s from other personnel records.) In addition, sensitive information, PII, and PHI regarding payroll, compensation, as well as any background screenings or medical tests (i.e. Drug test results) can be secured and monitored for access.

Efficiency

One school system was able to effectively circulate resumes to department heads, which meant that the overall “flattening” of the decision structure led to a lower cost per hire. In addition, the ability to store all documents for a position listing, and the ability to search by context within a resume can allow you to repurpose candidates for other positions. Finally, with all the silo systems that drive each stage of the hiring process, you can repurpose information, and easily run reports on missing documents such as an expired driver’s license, or acknowledgement of policy memos.

Employee Retention

Utilizing the benefits above including fair hiring, automatic communication, understood performance reviews and proper onboarding leads to a decreased turnover in employees. An onboarding software company shows that 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years or more if they experienced great onboarding and that they experience 50% greater new hire productivity. (Source: www.SHRM.org). Given that the average cost to replace an employee is at least 16% of their salary, the costs of turnover quickly add up.

Retrievability

While you want to ensure compliance and privacy and restrict unauthorized access, the rapid retrieval of documents when you DO need them is undisputed. Whether you need to retrieve a job description, a performance review, or initial hire paperwork, using a scanning system eliminates silos of information between recruitment, interviewing, onboarding and separation, and the associated applications that help manage these documents.

As previously mentioned, this is not an all-inclusive list of the benefits HR implementations can hope to achieve, the purpose was to indicate the areas that a system can generate a return on the investment. That said, when each department in an organization is working at its most efficient, workers can get on with the business of doing business, which will lead to the eventual success of both employees and employers.