Employees’ fluctuation is a natural thing regardless of any kind of global depression. Employees will always move to parental leave, change job positions, or, if you are lucky to be a successfully growing company, you will keep hiring new colleagues. How to hire them in these “remote” times?
How to hire in the “remote” era?
A standard hiring process consists of these steps:
- Publishing advertisement
- Collecting CVs
- Approaching chosen candidates
- Interview (possibly with more rounds)
- Hiring confirmation with documentation preparation
- Sending contract to the newcomer
- Signing contract
- Sending documentation to bureaus
- Work starts for a new hire.
Last year forced some significant changes in this process. Personal meetings were replaced by virtual calls. But how to simplify other steps, especially those that include contract documentation exchange?
Which onboarding steps can be covered by digital tools?
Publishing advertisement, collecting CVs and approaching chosen candidates has been performed for years online thanks to verified tools like email or advertisement portals (or, if you have a really strong brand, you can only publish new hire appeal on your own website).
Personal meetings were replaced by online ones with tools like Zoom, Teams or Skype. Even Google refreshed their video conference tool and renamed it to Meet during pandemic.
But what about other steps? Sending contracts via email is not the best approach to take, since you cannot avoid mistakes. That is the reason why new HR systems have been developed to manage the onboarding process in every step.
In these cloud HR systems you can manage:
- Candidates’ database,
- Onboarding, offboarding, position changes and connected processes and documents,
- Employee profiles with skills, education, certificates, trainings and more.
Very often, you can choose a feature and do not use others that you don’t need. Some platforms provide simplified solutions for SME companies, which don’t need a robust HR system and cannot pay expensive implementations and fees. These solutions still provide full service in online onboarding area. A huge advantage is that all engaged parties can participate in the process. Hiring process is started by HR manager and candidate can participate comfortably from home, fill in her/his personal information and review the contract. A future superior provides final approval of a new hire and at the end, payroll department confirms registration of a new colleague.
This online process can also simplify and automize other hiring steps. It can register an employee to other systems – e.g. time and attendance management system (if they are connected, or in case of TULIP – if there is in fact one platform). A platform like this can even help to import an employee to Social Insurance portal. Possibilities to adjust your processes are endless.
What do HR managers say about it?
Every HR manager knows which tasks take much of their time and are the biggest burden. Therefore, they should be the fuel of process changes in every company.
„We started digitizing our new hire processes before Covid hit us, so this automation would have happened no matter what. Thanks to this approach we are handling pandemic situation very well. We have our own solution for onboarding process. As an IT company with company management solution as a key service, we always start with testing new modules internally in the company for our own employees. For now, we manage primarily new hire process, which covers sharing contract in secured cloud and accepting confirmation by ticking required fields in digitized forms. We have our own drafts of contracts and other related documents with watermarks for protection. This way, we don’t have to fill in information handwritten with candidate. In TULIP, we can see if a candidate has already opened the document. If not, we can remind them to do so. Interviews are performed via Zoom, but we cannot wait for things to get better again and meet new colleagues in person. On the other hand, the remote era gives us an opportunity to hire new colleagues across the country without forcing them to travel. The only thing not managed smoothly yet is e-signatures. But this is on the government. “, says our HR manager, Martina Kovár.
E-signatures, legislation, and their impact on onboarding
A weak spot of employment agenda digitized is document signing. The system will generate contract, job position description and other attachments automatically from filled in data to preferred form, e.g. PDF. However, in most cases, the document will be printed and physically signed. Technically, it is possible to provide e-signature, but legislation, habits and trust are not so evolved that it is practical and trustworthy in every situation. This is mostly connected with daily routines like bank administration processes, related e.g. to mortgages.
Nevertheless, digitization and automation of onboarding agenda still require improvement, investing in it in this stage is a very valuable act. The whole hiring process will gain effectivity, transparency, and comfort for a new hire.
Want to know more about digitization of onboarding process? Get in touch with us for presentation of TULIP New hire module.
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Email: sona.vyhonska@tulipize.com
Phone: +421 917 882 324
