Eliminate Paperwork: How to Create a Paperless Compliance Department to Streamline Your Business?
What if I told you that average worker in the US goes through roughly 10,000 sheets of paper each year?😳
For decades, paper documents have been massively used in organizations especially, HR departments. Hours of filing and storing documents — paper methods consume tremendous time and reduce the productivity, which results in delayed work.
Although with the innovation of technologies, organizations have adopted digital methods; only a few organizations have transitioned into a paperless organization. According to CareerBuilder, HR managers who don’t fully automate say they lose an average of 14 hours a week manually completing tasks.
Going paperless helps you boost department productivity and ‌save paper. To build a successful business, make a shift to paperless department.
In this article, you will understand how to create a paperless department and change the direction & upgrade your department for effective working results.
1. Use Electronic Signature
An electronic signature is a digital mark that confirms the agreement of a contract or document.
Using electronic signature helps you avoid the redundancy of printing the documents, signing them, and mailing them back. Some of the eSignature softwares that you can utilise include PandaDoc, DocuSign & Adobe Sign
2. Utilise online forms & templates
Access most of the information in minutes without the risk of losing data. Statistics say forms have a conversion rate of 21.5%.
To create online forms, you can use online form builders like Google forms which help you embed forms on your website and track analytics.
3. Use Electronic Billing
Do you know 27% of SMBs admitted they have a hard time creating and sending invoices?
Sending online invoices is the solution.
Online invoice is an online document sent to the customer for receiving due payments.
You can choose from different methods sending online invoices: sending invoice PDFs or using online invoicing software.
For PDF invoices:
Opt for custom invoice templates from applications like Canva & Google Docs. Customize the invoice according to your requirement and email in the pdf format.
For Invoicing Software:
Create and track your invoices seamlessly using invoicing softwares like QuickBooks, Waveapps and Freshbooks.
What makes these softwares user-friendly is that you can set reminders and recurring invoices and automates the entire process.
4. Use Devices for Meetings
With regular meetings and brainstorming sessions, the requirement of pen and paper becomes a necessity.
To avoid this, encourage your employees to use laptops, tablets, and smartphones to take notes and record the meetings to maintain the workflow.
Apps like Evernote and Google Keep help you take the notes of the discussion and save them automatically.
5. Train Your Staff
The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them.
 — Zig Zagler
On transitioning to a paperless department, it is mandatory to train your staff on the recent changes. You can do this by helping them understand the latest technologies: digitizing the documents and using softwares.
6. Make Paperless Hiring
With paperless hiring, candidates do not need to print and present a paper resume to the hiring managers for each new hiring.
Candidates can create a digital resume once and mail the same document multiple times to different companies. This eliminates the need to print resumes several times for different companies and helps the recruiters scan the resumes quickly.
7. Create Paperless Onboarding Process
With paperless onboarding, new hires are required to fill the needful information once which is automatically saved and recorded in redundant fields. 52% of HR professionals globally beleive using paperless onboarding empowers new employees.
To automate your paperless onboarding, you need to choose a tool and set up the paperless onboarding system.
8. Digital File Storage
Replace manual documents with digital ones to change to the paperless department. How to do this? Scan the physical documents and save the digital file.
Use digital storage software that offers features such as storage amount, multiple documents and users, employee permission, or data archival support.
Google drive lets you store and back up your documents and provides integration and permission to various other applications.
Wrapping Up..
Here’s the thing: transitioning to a paperless department can vastly improve your workflow from hiring to onboarding and invoicing. Before making the shift, make sure you know what are the right softwares and how to set them up to streamline the process.
