Three Steps to Simplify Government Hiring, Onboarding and Management Processes
The availability of seamless, transparent and modern human resource (HR) processes is critical for government agencies to operate efficiently, especially in the new hybrid work environment. Unfortunately, government HR departments are historically understaffed and often rely on cumbersome, paper-based and time-consuming processes to get the job done.
Noting, in order for a process to be considered digitized, it should be digital from creation to end. The existence of a digital form that still needs to be printed, signed, scanned and filed still requires paper, thus has the potential to create process bottlenecks and workflow challenges.
To guide governments interested in truly digitizing their HR workflows, the following three steps are recommended. Following these steps has the potential to not only create a better experience and streamline repetitive employment processes, but can help HR professionals get back to engaging people, not constantly sending, receiving and finding documents.
1. Modernize the hiring and onboarding process
Competing against private sector organizations for qualified candidates has always been difficult for government agencies. However, the evolving job market post-COVID magnified the public sector’s recruitment challenges.
To retain the limited pool of applicants, governments must have fast and efficient recruitment and hiring workflows or risk losing qualified candidates due to the lengthy and often frustrating processes. Transitioning to a modern HR platform such as WorkDay and leveraging the pre-built DocuSign integration features, not only reduces the time it takes to track applicants through the hiring process, but once hired, makes it easier for new employees to sign and upload necessary tax and employment information. No longer will recruits need to physically sign documents or submit the same background information multiple times; and important onboarding paperwork such as offer letters and employment contracts will no longer get lost or sit for days in back and forth email correspondence.
2. Digitize the employee policy review process
According to a recent study by G&A Partners, HR professionals spend 73 percent of their time on administrative activities, much of which are manual and repetitive tasks. Leveraging technology like DocuSign to digitize, send and receive frequently used employee documents, such as policy acknowledgments and FLMA requests, HR professionals can reduce the time it takes to approve and route requests and track who has or has not opened and signed policy documents. Having a digitized process also makes it easier to meet compliance and reporting requirements and quickly find and review employee documents when necessary.
3. Optimize repetitive HR business workflows
Although government leaders are beginning to recognize the need and are moving towards digitized recruiting and onboarding processes, many are still relying on outdated paper processes for routine HR functions such as timesheets, evaluations and disciplinary actions. Resulting in lost paperwork, overflowing filing cabinets and endless hours searching for documents. A fact supported by Wakefield Research, which found that nearly 1 in 5 of the 1,000 U.S. office professionals surveyed ranked “digging for files they need” as the No. 1 problem to support the future of remote work; another 58% said the inability to do a quick search for files and documents is a “top-three problem.
The complete digitization of day-to-day manual paper processes can increase a government’s ability to identify fraud and waste, reduce submission and review times and eliminate the number of errors usually associated with manual data entry. It also reduces the time spent on identifying where a paper document is in the review process and eliminates finger-pointing around who saw the paperwork last when it gets lost.
The use of new and emerging technology to digitize workflows is helping government leaders shift the focus of HR from performing time consuming administrative tasks, to people centric activities.
To hear how DocuSign is partnering with government agencies to simplify and accelerate their critical HR processes and view a demo on how easy it is to implement seamless HR workflows, please watch this on-demand webinar.