HR departments are home to complex documents that contain business-related and employee information. Keeping employee records unorganized in a filing cabinet isn’t the best or safest way to manage your business records.
Instead of risking the loss of sensitive data, you should consider keeping employee documents well-organized, secure, and safe. The best way to accomplish that is to consider using an employee document management system.
Also called HR record management, the company record management system refers to prioritizing, organizing, filing, and storing employee documents and company records while ensuring compliance with the enforcing regulations.
HR service delivery software tools allow for more effective employee document management by making it easy to manage, store, and access all employee and business-relevant data. They eliminate the time-wasting paperwork and make your corporate record easily accessible and available.
Getting started with employee record management
Creating a document management strategy is the best way to organize your company records. Start by determining the most sensitive business records and files. These are usually related to executive and HR functions.
Vital HR documents typically include:
- Recruiting files – any information related to pre-employment testing results resumes, applications, job descriptions, interview notes, etc.;
- Accident and safety reports – incident reports, workers’ compensation, and paperwork on medical records;
- Hiring records – records on I-9s, employment contracts, and new employee onboarding;
- Employee job records and documents – defined HR policies, personnel files, noncompete agreements, policy changes, signed employee handbooks, promotion documents, unemployment and compensation records, and performance reviews;
- Training materials – resources and records on workforce training programs;
- Payroll documents – pay stubs, timesheets, tax forms, and attendance records;
- Leave records – paid parental leave requests, sabbaticals, and paid time off records;
- Benefit documents – data regarding promotions, enrollment, and business plans;
- Disability reports – requests for specific accommodations, disability records, and leave request forms.
All these documents contain sensitive, personal, and financial employee information that could endanger your business operation if lost.
Define access restrictions
Since corporate records are confidential, you should define access restrictions to prevent data loss. Restrict access to specific employees and departments to limit who can view and use corporate records. Access restrictions give you control over your business documents.
While you should be able to access all your documentation on demand, there’s no need for every employee to have access to all documents. Therefore, determine permissions by departments. Consider whether all managers, employees, and HR executives need to access corporate records and assess how often they need those files.
Categorize data with expiration dates
As a business leader, you have so many things to do on your hands. The last thing you need is worrying about petty paperwork. While storing your documents in a safe place is the best way to keep your company records secure and accessible, some of these files have expiration dates.
When they expire, the information becomes obsolete and unusable. That’s why we recommend carefully inspecting your files to categorize nearly expiring data and separate it from the rest of your corporate documents. All files have an expiration date law, so keep that in mind.
Consider determining security levels
Streamlining the employee document management process allows you to prioritize your corporate records. Some documents, such as disability information, medical records, financial reports, and law-protected files, need more protection and security than others.
Since you should keep sensitive documents separate from employee file folders, assign an appropriate security level for different types of documents. You can throw away general information such as date training documents. However, any document containing personal data about your employees requires secure disposal.
Benefits of employee document management
Effective employee document management provides a few benefits for your organization.
Compliance
Remaining compliant is critical for modern-day businesses. Keeping your business files up-to-date with the latest regulations helps you avoid legal issues and ensures your company complies with the relevant industry requirements.
Legal protection
Companies with well-organized documentation get the highest levels of legal protection. With countless state and federal laws requiring businesses to keep certain employee and corporate records, staying on top of your employee document management is the only way to avoid employee complaints, regulatory inquiries and audits, legal issues, and lawsuits.
Improved security
Some states have regulations that demand businesses to keep employee records in a secure place.
It is best to utilize document management software to keep all your records in a safe place.
The law legally requires you to secure sensitive employee information, like records about social security numbers, bank account credentials, disability details, and medical information.
Document management software improves your corporate security by locking physical files and securing your data storage with encryption and electronic protection.
Conclusion
As more businesses move to a digital workplace, document management becomes vital for driving increased workplace productivity, security, and efficiency. Thankfully, modern-day business leaders have multiple automated document management software solutions on their hands that can help them save time, effort, and resources on managing paperwork.
These solutions allow corporations to move from paper to paperless document management, improve workflows, and increase HR and employee productivity. In addition, they also help companies create safer, more secure workplaces that are more resilient to modern cybersecurity threats.
