Hunting For Savings in Your Budget: Episode Three

Episode 3: Paperless New Hire Packets – Win-Win for HR and Employees

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Shouldn’t it be a good one?

Your new hire walks into the office with a smile and nervous energy, prepared to learn more about the school and meet the people that will be part of their team. The new employee is greeted by a friendly face, and then handed what appears to be a full ream of paper, aka the new hire packet.

After hours of filling in forms (sometimes with duplicate information), reading policies and contracts, and signing off, their enthusiasm has dimmed. What should have been an engaging first introduction to your school, has turned into a day of extensive paperwork and inefficiency. What if you could make that first day with you more memorable by removing the manual paperwork and replacing it with focused human engagement from day one?

To create a memorable onboarding experience, consider organizing your new hire packet into forms that you need the new hire to fill in data and documents that they need to sign off on. Better yet, perhaps it is time to shift from paper-based data collection to paperless onboarding. To make this shift consider the following steps:

1. Create online versions of the paper-based forms you already developed. Information collected includes personal information, W-4, I-9, dependents, benefits, policies, contracts, personal information, as well as documents like resumes and transcripts. This can be done with various tools available such as Google Docs or DocuSign. (Note: these are just suggestions and Helios Ed does not endorse or is affiliated with these tools)
2. Once you have done this, send a link to your new hires to this online packet. This allows new hires to input their data and experience the organization before stepping foot in the office. This approach shows the new hire that you respect their time. It allows you to reimagine the new hire journey beyond physical paperwork.
3. Now that you have reviewed the online documents and are ready to complete the onboarding of the new hire, your meeting can be more personal. Use this time to focus on your school, students, and culture, instead of paperwork.

Paperless onboarding benefits more than just the new hire; it takes the burden of data entry off of your HR staff and gives them the gift of time. It reduces the cost of supplies needed to print onboarding packets that can be 100’s of pages of paper that eat up valuable office space in filing cabinets. Lastly, the paperless onboarding process expedites the overall process allowing the district as a whole to reduce overhead and recognize savings.

Happy hunting!

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