Human resources departments were once a strictly administrative function of a business, focused solely on employee recruitment and benefits administration. As time has gone on, the responsibilities of a typical HR department have evolved to include employee retention, on-boarding and off-boarding processes, drug testing, insurance, as well as cultural/ethical leadership.
Along with these new responsibilities came a seemingly endless flow of documents that needed to be created, managed, and stored, many of which must remain on file for years, required by law for compliance reasons.
In fact, almost everything related to employment eventually makes its way through your HR department. Requests for time off, benefit eligibility information, and payroll forms start to pile up, leaving your human resource department drowning in paper piles.
Unfortunately, as businesses grow, HR departments are typically one of the last areas of investment, leading to small, under-resourced teams inundated with paperwork.
The increased demand on HR departments to manage these documents added hours of manual data entry, which led to a litany of administrative issues including misfiled/lost records, compliance issues, and inefficient workflows.
Thankfully, the source of these issues is well known: outdated paper-based records keeping. When it comes to operating an efficient HR department, maintaining regulatory compliance, and ensuring the confidentiality of your sensitive employee data, paper-intensive filings systems often stand in the way.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way to convert your mountain of paper employee records into a text-searchable archive of digital files? Good news, there is.
SecureScan’s human resources scanning service allows you to convert your existing paper-based record-keeping system into a modern, digital document management system, enabling your team to organize, distribute, and manage employee documents with ease. We can scan, index, and convert your employee files into a text-searchable archive of data, including job applications, resumes, tax documents, insurance forms, benefit enrollment, vacation requests, and more.
An optimized HR workflow can help avoid costly and disruptive surprises that interfere with the operation of the business and help you meet your HR document retention requirements.
What are the benefits of human resources document scanning?
There are many benefits for HR departments who go paperless, including enhanced security, simplified compliance, improved organization, long-term cost savings, and an efficient hiring process.
Enhanced Security
Human resources teams regularly handle some of the most sensitive information that moves through your business, including your employee’s personal data. Maintaining these records in paper format introduces significant risks to compliance, and makes it difficult to meet legal and professional confidentiality obligations.
That’s because paper is insecure: Prone to theft, damage, or loss, paper record-keeping offers little to no protection for your data.
Our ultra-secure HIPAA compliant scanning service allows you to implement all of the security bells and whistles that come with storing your files digitally, including strict access controls, file encryption, and automatic backups to help protect your HR data.
All documents are scanned in our secure access controlled facility under 24/7 monitored surveillance. Our employees are subjected to strict hiring requirements and thorough background checks, as well as rigorous HIPAA compliance training and certification to ensure that the sensitive information contained in your HR documents is protected throughout the process.
Simplified Compliance
Human resources departments are required by law to store personal employee information related to the business, often for extended periods of time. Each document type has a specific retention schedule that must be met in order for your organization to stay compliant with state and federal regulations.
This includes information gathered throughout the employee/employer relationship, going all the way back to employee applications, resumes, background checks, and reference checks.
Many of the rules around storing these documents were created to ensure adherence to nondiscrimination and equal opportunity laws, creating an equal and fair opportunity to all applicants, which we can all agree is great for business.
However, meeting these retention schedules can be complex and time-consuming for HR teams looking to minimize excess data while maintaining a clean and organized record system. This means tons of time wasted on inefficient paper-pushing, reducing productivity, and generating extra HR-related expenses.
Digitizing your files allows your team to automate many of the mundane tasks that formerly required manual labor, including the deletion of files that fall outside of retention requirements. This makes it easy to ensure you meet your employee data storage requirements without any additional overhead.
Plus, storing your documents no longer requires manual filing, reducing errors and eliminating the need for physical storage space for your records.
Improved Organization
It can be difficult for HR departments to keep up with the sheer volume of documents that need to be processed. Oftentimes, this data ends up spread across multiple specialized records-keeping systems, forcing HR team members to manage several systems at once, leading to a disorganized mess.
And disorganization often leads to human error, increasing the possibility of costly filing mistakes or a loss of data that poses a risk to compliance.
In addition to adhering to state and federal laws, a well-organized HR records system helps HR teams better support your organization’s employee actions.
Digitizing HR records allows your team to merge formerly disparate record-keeping systems into one centralized repository of data, making it easier to store, retrieve, and manage your employee documents more efficiently.
Long Term Cost Savings
One side effect of a paper record-keeping system is the quickly escalating requirements for physical storage and the costs associated with it.
Paper storage is more expensive than it seems and is a commonly overlooked expense for businesses who store a ton of it, especially when you factor in the price of office space square footage. Not to mention hours of wasted employee time, searching through boxes and filing cabinets for data.
As technology has progressed over the last 10 years, the availability of low-cost, long-term digital storage has exploded, providing businesses with a financially responsible alternative for data storage.
Going paperless allows you to take advantage of these benefits, leading to long-term savings and reduced HR costs over the life of the business.
Efficient Hiring Experience
A significant amount of time and energy goes into onboarding new employees. From sifting through the piles of inbound resumes looking for qualified candidates to managerial collaboration and candidate selection, there are tons of documents to be evaluated and shared among your team.
Unfortunately, paper records can only be in one employee’s hands at any given time, creating hiring bottlenecks, making collaboration among your team difficult to downright impossible.
Digitizing these documents allows multiple members of your team to view applicants’ resumes and credentials at once, cutting down on wasted time spent processing applications and speeding up the hiring process. Passing documents among your team becomes instantaneous and effortless, making it easy to share data and collaborate during the consideration phase.
Don’t miss an opportunity to hire the perfect candidate because it took too long to evaluate their qualifications. Digitizing inbound applications and resumes drastically improves the hiring process and makes it easy to fill positions quickly.
What Kinds of Human Resources Documents Can Be Scanned?
When it comes to consolidating your paper records into a single, manageable HRM system, our document scanning services have you covered. Our conversion process converts your paper records into indexed, text searchable PDF files, compatible with almost every HRM system on the market, including ADP, Bamboo HR, and Workday.
- Employment Applications and Resumes
- Employee contracts, non-disclosure/non compete forms, and signed confidentiality agreements
- State and Federal tax documents including W-4’s, 1099s, and I-9’s
- Employee benefits eligibility and insurance related documents
- Personnel files
- Employee benefits data and 401K information
- Pre-payment Authorization & Direct Deposits
- Training documents, mandatory
- Performance reviews, attendance records, and time-clock records
- Benefit change requests and associated administration files
- Exit interview documents
- Archived employee records still under retention requirements
Why should I choose SecureScan for my HR document scanning?
SecureScan has been helping HR departments of all sizes to improve productivity and efficiency while reducing costs since 2003. Our dedication to providing secure, affordable, high-quality services has made us the number one document scanning provider for government agencies, medical facilities, law firms, HR departments across the state of New York and beyond.
Call (877) SCAN-DOC now to talk to one of our friendly scanning experts, who will walk you through the HR scanning process from start to finish, address any concerns you may have, and help to develop a document conversion plan that meets the needs of your business, and your budget.
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