Why HR Still Lags in Digitizing Employee Documents
HR challenges can have a direct impact on the entire company, and unfortunately one of these pitfalls is that few organizations are taking advantage of the benefits of managing all of their employee files electronically.
In today’s tech-centric world, it is surprising that only 12 percent of organizations are storing all of their employee files electronically, according to a new survey on HR business practices conducted by Access, the provider of CartaHR employee document management software. Results of the survey reveal that it is still common for many organizations to store some employee documents on paper, meaning increased risk of information breaches and more challenges to efficiency when accessing HR documents.
According to the survey, employee files are most often decentralized, with these findings:
- 36% store employee files in a shared services center
- 36% store some off-site and some in their offices
- 17% store employee files in file rooms in multiple offices around the country/world
- 12% store all of their employee files electronically
Operational inefficiencies, compliance concerns, audit readiness issues, and ill-defined retention policies are all challenges faced by HR teams with decentralized employee document collection.
The good news is that there are options available to improve business processes, as the survey highlights, including updating HR’s methods of preparing and responding to audits. Although an audit is a daunting prospect for companies, only one percent of respondents reported that their software would allow them to easily find and organize documents for an audit, and the vast majority (83%) stated that the HR team would manage the audit. Those who do say they have digital files and nine percent said someone would have to manually pull documents from each electronic employee file, a laborious and time-consuming process.
When it comes to employee document retention, the survey found 44 percent of respondents, were only somewhat confident that their department has a strong retention policy in place; while 32 percent claimed to be very confident; and 20 percent were not confident but offered that they considered it a priority for next year.
The survey findings also showed that fully digitized HR departments are rare:
- 74% store employee documents in a mixture of paper and digital formats
- 18% store all employee documents in paper format
- 4% store inactive employee files in the paper, and active files in digital
- 4% store all employee files digitally
What it all comes down to is that a slow transition to fully digital HR departments is creating many challenges. Today’s HR teams have much to contend with and it can be overwhelming to juggle storing employee records, managing privacy and retention requirements, and reducing the potential risk and impact related to audits and legal actions. To help HR teams address these challenges, effective organizations are turning to employee document management software, in concert with scanning and offsite storage services, to make employee records easier to securely manage, access, and monitor for compliance and retention.
The Access HR survey was conducted online, with more than 200 survey respondents, working in HR management positions. More detailed information on the survey findings can be found here.
