HR Still Lagging In Digitizing Employee Documents: Survey
Only 12 percent of organizations are storing their employee files electronically
Posted on 04-23-2019, Read Time: Min
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Very few organizations are reaping the benefits of managing all of their employee files electronically, creating significant HR challenges that can have a direct impact on the company.
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, provider of CartaHR employee document management software. The survey reveals that most organizations still store some employee documents on paper, putting them at risk of information breaches and making it challenging to access HR documents efficiently.
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 survey highlights opportunities to improve business processes, including HR’s methods of preparing and responding to audits. 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. Nine percent said they have digital files and someone would have to pull documents from each electronic employee file, a tedious and time-consuming process.
Regarding employee document retention, 44 percent of survey respondents indicated that they were only somewhat confident that they have a strong retention policy in place; 32 percent said that they were very confident, and 20 percent were not confident and noted that this would be 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 paper, and active files in digital
- 4% store all employee files digitally
The lack of fully digital HR departments creates many challenges. HR teams are overwhelmed with storing employee records, complying with privacy and retention requirements, and mitigating the risk and impact associated with 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.
Access conducted the survey online, with more than 200 survey respondents working in HR management positions. More detailed information on the survey findings can be found here.
Author Bio
| Wendy Wolk Ryan is Senior Product Manager at Access. Wendy Ryan has 11 years of experience delivering industry leading HR software. Before joining the Access CartaHR team as Senior Product Manager, Wendy managed HR software solutions for companies including IBM, Kenexa, Salary.com and Vitals Solutions. At Access, Wendy has been working on ways to let HR professionals spend more time on people and strategy through transforming the CartaHR document management platform into command central for critical HR documents and processes. Her work on rich integrations, security and audit trails, and compliance features benefit HR teams by saving them time and money. Connect Wendy Wolk Ryan Visit www.accesscorp.com Follow @AccessToday |
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