Going Paperless – More to It than Meets the Eye – Part 3

So far, we have talked about the road to going paperless. So, how paperless can HR actually be? Here’s a look at just a few ways going paperless has revolutionized the traditional…

Hiring

With teacher shortage and a more millennial population entering the workforce, it is increasingly important for your school or district to keep up with the digital age when it comes to hiring. Consider this: your neighboring schools and districts sometimes want the same candidates that you want to hire.

How quickly you move through the process and the experience candidates have in the process can have a big impact on the quality of people you recruit. Streamlining the application and screening process as well as communications to applicants will ensure that your school or district looks good to potential hires.

75% of hiring managers use either applicant tracking or recruiting software to improve their hiring process

Source:   empxtrack.com/blog/statistics-for-human-resource-management/

New Hire Onboarding Paperwork

With electronic solutions, new hires can complete all their ‘paperwork’ online, inputting all the required information and securely uploading personal documents themselves from the comfort of their own home, whenever they want.

The E-SIGN Act of 2000 has made electronic signatures legal and valid. Systems that provide standard hiring forms (IRS W-4s, I-9s, etc.) can also upload and easily modify your own forms (contracts, agreements, and handbooks) and offer e-signature features to capture the new hires’ approval of important documents. The processing of forms and documents is easier than ever since they are approved and stored securely upon packet approval.

You want an onboarding process that also has a built-in workflow so that forms can be routed to other departments such as IT and payroll for review. But the process should not end there. You will need these forms and data in future for board reports and personnel files. So your paperless solution should be able to handle more than just forms. Otherwise, your staff would still end up printing those online forms and wasting time and paper.

“Digital resources could be costing up to $3,000 per teacher due to the hidden fees associated with copying and printing.”

– Nicole Gorman, Senior Education World Contributor

An effective onboarding process saves HR time and potential mistakes related to double data entry, all while making a great impression on the new hire. Linda de la Torre, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources at San Marino Unified School District puts it eloquently: “I think in public education, we don’t always tend to be on the cutting edge of technology. Being forward-thinking, the ability to have an online onboarding process puts us at the forefront. It also helps us recruit better!”

New hires that undergo a structured onboarding program are 58% more likely to be with the organization after three years

Source:  empxtrack.com/blog/statistics-for-human-resource-management/

Reports

Perhaps one of the biggest time savers comes from having all your employee files available within a system that can generate reports from all that data instantly (AKA, thousands of times faster than any human can, using traditional methods). Board reports, CBEDS, CALPADS, seniority and evaluation reports can all be done with a single click.

Reminders    

Peace of mind can be an often-overlooked value within the workplace, especially HR. Within the traditional HR world, you have a lot of reminders to remember to send out. An optimal paperless HR system can do the remembering for you, automatically sending out notifications to update TB tests, credentials, certificates, first aid, CPR, and so on. Even birthday greetings can be automatically set up. This allows HR staff to better focus on more important tasks. 

Evaluations

Not having to deal with administering and filing paper evaluation forms is one thing, but to be able to electronically manage the whole evaluation process is another. K12 HR systems now have the potential to enable administrators to complete evaluations electronically, automatically send reminders to administrators and staff of approaching evaluations, enable the signing off on these evaluations, and instantly run reports related to these evaluations.

Moreover, an ongoing online solution can help administrators and employees engage in a more meaningful, user-friendly dialog that can ultimately boost employee morale and support.

Source:  empxtrack.com/blog/statistics-for-human-resource-management/

Requisitions and Forms

How do you find out where your personnel requisition form is at in the traditional HR approval process? For most staff, it means having to call, email or physically track down coworkers. What happens if they’re out of the office, busy or on vacation? Forget about leaving the office early since your process is now further delayed.

With the right paperless HR solution, workflow processes are now done much faster, online.

Online audit trails let you see, in real time, exactly where your workflows are, removing the need to track down your coworkers. You can also set up multiple approvers, allowing quicker processing time when someone is out sick or on vacation. Approval routing can let the computer figure out who needs to approve. Automated email reminders let everyone within your workflow process know when it’s their turn to approve/deny their portion. 

“It feels much more legitimate and professional to be able to keep all of the important data in one place,” says Karla Diamond, HR Manager at Granada Hills Charter High School.

Timesheets, Leave Balances, and Employee Attendance

You may never have to look at another 3’x 5’ card or spreadsheet again with the right paperless HR solution. Employees can now clock in and out as well as submit their own absences and extra duty online. Subsequently, leave balances can also be automatically updated and viewed instantly. The right solution can combine leave balances, tracking absences and time off requests, as well as timesheets all in one place enabling employees, supervisors, and HR to be on the same page with all this crucial data.

Employee Self-Service and Communications

An employee wants to know how much time off they have, one night or weekend, to plan a family vacation… HR needs employees to sign a series of updated documents… pay history needs to be verified for personal accounting purposes… All of this can now be done easily and remotely, online, within the right paperless HR system. Now, employees don’t need to make trips to the HR office nearly as often. HR staff can focus, instead, on important tasks and not have to look up information for staff since they can now look it up themselves, comfortably at home, outside of work hours.

“Prior to implementing a solution, the foundation’s staff typically responded to 1,200 requests per month. Today, monthly requests average only a hundred because people can look up the information online themselves,” says Azar Farahmand, ­Director of Gift Administration and Data Management at Arizona State University Foundation for A New American University.

These are just some of the no-brainer benefits of going paperless. And, as the technology develops, there will be more benefits to come! If you’re already paperless, you know these perks and, likely, can’t imagine life without them. If you’re not yet paperless, we hope this article can help you sail through and enjoy the efficiency of a whole new world!