HR departments are some of the hardest-working and most time-stretched. After all, we rely on them to hire, onboard, and manage people at all levels of a business. Plus, streamline HR paperwork!

With that, there are tons of challenges that HR professionals face with regard to paperwork. Whether it’s managing and tracking job descriptions, keeping track of paper trails, or ensuring team members have all their necessary documentation filled out and stored safely on file, they need to wear lots of different hats to keep things running smoothly.

Thankfully, there are ways in which HR paperwork can be streamlined. It just means taking a step back and making some smarter choices. Let’s dive in.

Why HR Paperwork Needs Streamlining

HR departments are absolutely swimming in paperwork. It’s thought that at least four in ten professionals spend at least a full day every week just managing administrative duties. That’s time that could be better spent actively helping people, running recruitment drives, and analyzing workforce planning strategies.

In fact, we only need to look at the time spent during hiring alone to see where streamlining could benefit. It’s estimated that the average time-to-hire across industries is a staggering 44 days – sometimes higher for certain sectors.

Time-to-hire slowdowns can occur for various reasons, but a sluggish, confusing paperwork and administration process is just one key culprit.

Many HR departments prefer paper documentation because it’s easy to manage and annotate, as was commonly believed a decade ago. However, since then, technology has evolved. And the remote working boom has increased demands for document management to go fully digital.

Regardless, an HR department that’s struggling with piles of papers and that’s struggling to keep documents in line risks giving candidates and hires poor onboarding experiences. After all, when you apply for a job, you expect HR to have all bases covered and all data ready to hand. Sadly, that’s not always the case!

From writing smarter job descriptions to signing documents online, there are many ways HR paperwork can be streamlined for the better.

Common Issues That Slow Down the Hiring Process

Slow hiring and onboarding issues vary from one company to another – but here are some common sticking points:

• Gaps in communication (such as by losing documentation or failing to log conversations) can leave some candidates waiting long periods to get interviewed and hired
• Failing to centralize and manage all candidate documents in a single location makes hiring confusing – leaving HR having to muddle through piles of paperwork, delaying hiring steps, and reducing onboarding quality

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