Electronic Onboarding Starts Employee Files Paperless from Day One

Why print and scan onboarding forms when your employee files can be electronic from the start?

If you're considering taking your HR department paperless, electronic employee onboarding is a great place to start. From general tax forms to company-specific forms and policy acknowledgements, we've all seen how much paper can be generated through the onboarding process.

What makes it even more difficult is that the process is a always a little different for every company and typically also varies for different types of staff. This can make keeping onboarding forms organized and ready to be utilized almost as big of a challenge as getting all of that paperwork completed efficiently by new hires.

Finally, how do you avoid printing out completed onboarding packets just to create a paper file? Here's how electronic onboarding can allow your HR team to save time and easily adopt an electronic employee file system.

Electronic Onboarding Saves HR Time

Instead of using traditional pen-and-paper forms for onboarding, many companies are switching to an electronic employee onboarding process. Instead of paper, HR teams can create online versions of all of their forms and save their different onboarding packets as templates. When a new employee is hired, simply email them the appropriate onboarding template to complete and electronically sign in advance of their first day; or allow them to complete it on a computer or tablet in the office. This makes it easy to keep your different onboarding packets organized and ready for action.

Automatic Employee File Creation

A lot of companies are already able to handle a portion of their onboarding process electronically. Usually, a handful of tax forms can be completed electronically through your Payroll system. Unfortunately, many of these same companies wind up simply printing out these forms to store in a paper file for the employee. This prompts the question: Why print and scan onboarding forms when your employee files can be electronic from the start? With a true electronic onboarding process, you can get all of your forms completed and signed online - not just a handful of government issued tax forms. When the process is finished, your new hire's folder can be automatically created from their completed onboarding forms with everything filed away inside. HR does not have to worry about naming files and finding the correct folder to save everything in.

Managing Employee Files Going Forward

Since your employee folders are created automatically from the onboarding process, you can start each employee with a paperless record from the day they're hired. Going forward, though, there should never be a need to print something just to have to scan it back in to their folder. So, adding to employee folders and retrieving files going forward should be a quick, simple and secure process. An easy way to bring files in down the line is to simply drag-and-drop them into the employee's folder. When you need to retrieve a file, a quick search by employee name, ID, folder section, document type, expiration date or other identifier brings back the files you're looking for without having to manually find the folder and file.

Electronic employee files have a number of additional benefits like automated file audit reports, segmented access for different roles, secure online file sharing and ...