HR organisations have a wide array or responsibilities within the organisation, many of which involve labour-intensive record keeping. Ensuring the security and compliance of these records is essential, especially as working methods have rapidly changed.
While the benefits are extensive, these are the top 5 ways in which an Enterprise Information Management (EIM) solution using metadata can help HR departments manage information better, work more efficiently and more securely.
1. Manage all information electronically
An EIM system removes the need for paper altogether; Paper records take up valuable storage space and are vulnerable to fire, flood, or tampering. Documents and records can be stored, shared, and disposed of electronically throughout each stage of their lifecycle. With an EIM system, there is no longer any need to print or scan documents, as documents requiring approval can be reviewed and accepted digitally. This prevents paper records being mislaid, or held insecurely, and makes remote access far easier.
2. Control access to documents
Metadata within the EIM can be used to manage permissions, ensuring that people only have access to the information they are authorised to. This can be dynamic, with access to a document changing as it moves through its lifecycle, or as a person’s job role changes. This process is also automated, meaning less work involved for HR and IT to ensure information is secure, yet available to the right people. An example of this would be an employee contract that was tagged with the employee’s name as a metadata property. By applying that piece of metadata, you can ensure that only HR, the employee, and their manager are able to view the document. If that employee were to change departments, the system would automatically update to mean that their new manager could now see the contract, and the old manager was no longer able to. EIM also enables you to access the full version history of every piece of information. This means you can see who has accessed a document, what they have done, and when.
3. Find and update employee records instantly
How long does it take you to find the records you need? Manually searching through even the most organised of filing cabinets is a hugely time-consuming task. Unfortunately, storing this information electronically in folders is not much easier. You’re just moving the problems of physical filing cabinets to digital filing cabinets. How do you know which folder someone else has stored a document in—particularly if that document is relevant to multiple different folders? Information is hard to find, and inevitably, duplicate copies are made, making it hard to ensure you’re working on the most up-to-date version or to know where these copies reside.
By managing information based on “what” it is, searching for the information you need becomes quick and easy. Because you have described the document using metadata (tagging it with properties such as “document type” and “employee name”) rather than manually search through multiple relevant folders, you can now search for the document in the EIM system. You can choose which search terms you use, as you can search based on metadata properties or even text within a document, and the system will return a list of search results in order of relevance. Crucially, regardless of the way you search for and access this contract, there will still only be one single copy. You can also leverage metadata to automate record review cycles, retention and disposition policies if required.
4. Automate manual processes
The HR department deals with a number of processes which need to be stringently followed but can be extremely manual and cumbersome. An example of such a process is hiring a new employee. Advertising a vacancy, managing applications, arranging interviews, dealing with offer letters, signing contracts, and notifying managers of new starters, can all be automated and entirely digitised by leveraging EIM, through the power of metadata. EIM can be used to publish job adverts to an intranet or website, receive and automatically store all applications and accompanying documents, and trigger a workflow which automates the process of arranging interviews, dealing with and signing offer letters and contracts and confirming start dates from beginning to end.
Streamlining and automating stages of the process such as recruitment, employee learning and certifications builds in compliance and ensures governance throughout.
5. Access everything from one single place
As a HR department, it’s likely you are using one or more specialist HR systems, alongside network drives and paper in filing cabinets. But do all of these information repositories communicate with each other, or are silos of (often duplicate) information formed? Have you started sharing documents through other means as you communicate with managers and employees remotely? An EIM system should communicate fluently with your HR, ERP, CRM, or any other system, allowing you to access anything you need from a single location. You can even access information and action tasks using your smart phone or tablet. Accessing records from a single location, with permissions in place, ensures that you are always working from the latest and correct version and that secure information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Why choose Embrace Digital for your HR Records Management Project?
Embrace Digital is a technology focused consultancy and services provider, providing business efficiencies through process automation.
As a strategic partner to many of the market leading technology vendors within the scanning, data capture, workflow and robotic process automation space, Embrace Digital can recommend technology that best fits your requirements, business and budget.
We’ll work closely with you to maximise the opportunities for automation, ensure integration with your existing business applications, and manage the digitisation and transfer of your existing records held in paper and digital format into your new solution.
The team at Embrace Digital are always happy to discuss ideas and share approaches that can help to bring more efficiency, security and collaboration to your HR organisation.
