As you transform your HR department into a modern organization, digitization is an essential step. But as many leaders learn the hard way, digitizing HR documents is just the beginning. Whether paper or digital, documents must be managed in a way that maximizes efficiency and streamlines access but also meets compliance and security requirements.
The right HR document management solution can help your HR organization make the grade. But with so many software options out there, what should you consider when making your selection? Here’s a quick study guide to educate you on HR document management solutions.
What are HR document management solutions?
Unlike enterprise content management solutions, content services solutions and other general-use applications, HR document management solutions are designed to meet the specific needs of HR professionals to store, secure and track both paper and digital documents. Your cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solution may promise to be comprehensive—but even it can’t provide all the document management functionality you need. If your HR department has already implemented an HCM solution, you’ve probably discovered that it doesn’t quite pass the test.
What makes HR document management solutions different from general document management solutions already in my tech stack?
Access, efficiency, compliance and security are the core document management capabilities any HR department needs. General document management solutions may be able to handle some of these functions, but not all of them. In contrast, HR document solutions are designed to provide all four:
- Access: Best-in-class HR document management solutions provide a central repository that can handle both digital and paper documents. They let you easily digitize paper documents without the need for specialized hardware and are cloud-based, so documents are available to authorized viewers anywhere.
- Efficiency: HR document management solutions help streamline common HR processes. They can automatically index documents based on metadata configurable to your chosen criteria, automate repetitive workflows and provide self-service options for employees.
- Compliance: To protect your organization, HR document management applications automatically enforce document-level retention policies and flag incomplete files or outdated documents. They let you easily gather and share data for audits or discovery by allowing users to pull specific documents across all employee files instead of searching across systems and physical locations.
- Security: HR document management solutions restrict user access at the role, feature, geography and document level, while permitting customized access. When sharing documents either inside or outside the organization, the software lets you set an access expiration date, create secure virtual review rooms, and restrict document printing or downloading to reduce risk.
How can HR document management solutions benefit my organization?
Using general-purpose document management solutions or even HCM applications can put your organization at risk for falling out of compliance or exposing sensitive data to the wrong eyes. HR document management solutions offer the answer to these problems.
Tailored HR document management solutions enhance security and ensure compliance, giving you peace of mind while also protecting your organization from reputational and financial risk. They save your HR organization time by automating routine processes and organizing documents for quick retrieval. Instead of spending hours tracking down documents or laboring over tedious back-office administrative tasks, your HR team can focus on work that drives value for the business.
The Right Answer
As you study your options for HR document management, choose the right answer by selecting a solution that’s designed for HR needs. A good HR document management solution solves the problems of access, efficiency, security and compliance, ensuring your organization passes the digital transformation test with flying colors.
Download our quick-hit guide, What HR Leaders Need in a Document Management Solution, to learn more about what to look for in a system and how it fits into your organization’s tech stack.
