How Your HR Department Can Drive Organizational Success with End-to-end Digitization

Human Resources (HR) has always been at the center of all employee activity, from recruitment, performance appraisals, and onboarding, to payroll and career development. Traditionally, HR departments have been administrative in nature, serving process-oriented functions of an organization’s executive management team.   

However, securing talent today is as challenging as securing new clients. Getting offer letters out quickly reduces the chance of losing a great candidate to another company. Likewise, the employee onboarding experience is being treated with the same importance as the customer experience, from first interactions to the offer letter. 

Indeed, today’s competitive pressures are giving HR leaders the opportunity to revolutionize the employee experience and shift organizations towards a digital-first mindset that drives organizational competitiveness and success.  

HR and the problem of the partially automated process  

The “paper problem” facing HR departments is certainly not what it used to be. Once upon a time, the volume of documents an HR department manages was truly overwhelming. From NDAs, new hire forms, and employee policy distribution, to performance appraisals and employee insurance forms — the amount of paperwork coming out of HR delivering services to its stakeholders was massive.   

HR departments are no longer drowning in a sea of printouts. That said, the need for streamlining processes is more important than ever – not just to reduce time spent on residual manual processes, but also to eliminate costly errors in compliance and inefficiencies. 

Consider the following challenges that stem from partially automated processes:  

1. 1. Partially automated onboarding processes are costly. For instance, one global company spent $900,000 in one year on scanning and imaging paper files back into their electronic system. 
2. 2. Delays push out the time-to-productivity for new hires.  
3. 3. With partially automated processes, it can be particularly challenging to scale up process-intensive HR operations such as recruitment and onboarding, during peak periods.  

Transitioning HR workflows with end-to-end digitization helps HR become more productive, and improves auditability and regulatory compliance. As a result, HR can focus on value-added activities such as attracting top talent, onboarding new hires faster and revolutionizing their employee experience.   

How end-to-end digitization adds value  

From recruiting and onboarding to performance management, today’s leading HR organizations are digitizing and securing every step of the employee lifecycle to achieve increased productivity, convenience, and cost-efficiency.  

Here are just some of the most important outcomes, along with recommended solutions to drive those outcomes: 

• Speed new hire processing time with e-signatures consumed as a service from HR systems such as Workday – including qualified e-signature capabilities to meet applicable regulatory compliance requirements. Learn about OneSpan Sign 
• Improve data quality and the end-to-end workflow, with smart digital forms. Learn about OneSpan Sign for Smart Communications 
• Protect access to sensitive information and VPNs, with mobile and hardware authenticators, including OTP,  biometrics, push notifications, and FIDO technology. Learn about Digipass | Mobile Authenticators 
• Guide executive candidates through the hiring documents at the recruitment stage, and differentiate with a high-touch, personalized digital engagement solution. Learn about OneSpan Virtual Room 
• Enable strong security & authentication with mobile app protection. Learn about Mobile Security Suite 
• Defend against the latest security threats and vulnerabilities while preserving the mobile app experience, with mobile app shielding. Learn about App Shielding

At a strategic level, end-to-end digitization of HR processes has an outsized impact on key organizational goals:  

• Elevating the employee experience: HR leaders strongly believe that creating a memorable employee experience mirrors their best customer experience. Leading HR organizations are equipping employees with the latest tech tools and mobile apps to enable fully digital workflows. 
• Enabling remote workforces: An electronic process breaks through borders, creating streamlined workflows regardless of device or location. Many organizations are turning to mobile technologies to create a culture of empowerment, where employees can make decisions and move projects forward from anywhere.   
• Improving productivity: A fully digitized process reduces processing times, freeing HR staff from unnecessary administrative tasks so they can apply their expertise where it matters - boosting morale and productivity.  
• Facilitating compliance: Automated processes can enforce workflow rules so common errors like missing documents, pages or signatures disappear. In addition, digital processes provide visibility into the status of the signing process, with a full audit trail of each signer’s actions to demonstrate compliance. 

Success stories

Many organizations are reaping the benefits of transforming key processes across their company. Here are a few use cases demonstrating how HR departments have impacted their business:  

• One global logistics company is using OneSpan Sign across more than 70 countries. In 2020, the company benefited from e-signatures for hiring its 90,000 seasonal temp employees – ensuring that all paperwork was completed before workers enter the site. Learn how our solution works with SAP HCM 
• OneSpan Sign helped a large US Federal agency drop turnaround times for review cycles by 70%, reducing processing times from three months to an average of 27 days. Explore our solutions for government 
• OneSpan provided European HR platform Akyla with a competitive edge by solving the time-consuming problem of signing thousands of contracts—accelerating onboarding and helping new hires to become productive faster. Explore our solutions for staffing agencies 

The time is now for your HR department to work toward the goal of end-to-end digitization, across the entire employee lifecycle. Learn more about OneSpan’s solutions for the HR & on-boarding use case.