Hiring a new employee can be an exciting time for an organization, but it’s also a dangerous time for opportunity loss. Hours and hours of organizational support go into onboarding a new hire – from completing paperwork to reviewing standardized processes. It’s a necessary time for administrative tasks that ensure compliance needs are met, but at what cost to overall company productivity? 

Depending on the size of the company, new hire onboarding can make teams feel overstretched leading to higher turnover, lower engagement, and poor productivity. Using a sophisticated document management tool can be the game changer that gets your company feeling less of the burn, and more of the excitement that a new hire’s energy can bring to the team. 

Large and small organizations are finding ways to onboard their new talent – whether as employees or contractors – in more innovative ways using a robust document lifecycle management tool like Scan123. 

Here are the five ways a document lifecycle management system can lower costs in new hire onboarding: 

1. Reduce time spent on each new hire 

Typically, a new hire can need anywhere from three to six months to ramp up to full productivity. Spending time getting to know the new employee framework, building relationships, etc., are all important exercises for a new hire to complete. 

Onboarding new talent with a better system can speed up this process, however, by decreasing opportunity loss and increasing overall productivity by as much as 70 percent. 

Using a streamlined system, powered by a comprehensive document management tool, creates an opportunity for new hires and staff to seamlessly onboard with company-wide visibility in half the time. 

2. New hire documents are automatically filed using OCR technology

Smart document management is the way of the future, but not everyone is up to speed on what that means. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a process that converts an image of text into a machine-readable text format.  

Using a tool empowered with OCR technology means HR leads can upload signed documents that will get digitally filed automatically. Less time spent on tedious paper-based processes is always a win-win!

3. Increased new hire success rate through a simple process

Simplified onboarding processes increase the success rate of any new employee transition. A less complicated system will allow both managers and new hires to focus on acclimation, integration, and productivity. Organizations with a strong onboarding process are known to improve new hire retention by 82 percent. Thoughtful preboarding, from the moment an offer letter is signed, is essential in developing that strong onboarding flow since a little over 11 percent of candidates actually change their minds after signing. 

Getting the paperwork out of the way early, so your employee’s first day can be filled with celebration, introductions, and early learning is the way to streamline for overall increased productivity. Using a document management tool allows you to continue the onboarding process with less stress over time, and ensures your new hire will acclimate well and have a higher likelihood of staying for the long term.  

4. New hires with a positive onboarding process will tell other potential candidates

Now more than ever, with employee retention at an all-time low due to the “Great Resignation”, new hire recommendations are vital to securing future talent. A little more than 20% of new hires are unlikely to recommend an employer to their circle of influence (friends & family) if their new hire onboarding experience was lackluster. 

An engaging, relatively stress-free, experience increases the likelihood that a new hire will not only tell other potential candidates positive things but will also limit the chance that they will go on to a public forum to complain. Review sites like Glassdoor are rife with comments from dissatisfied employees, and that commentary often shifts potential new hires from continuing to pursue employment. Making obtaining qualified talent a challenging exercise for any human resources team lead. 

Alternatively, a refined new hire onboarding that is easier and well-thought-out, can help you to attract very strong candidates. Having an onboarding system powered by a robust lifecycle document management tool makes space for more important things – like employee development and company culture. These are the things you want other candidates to hear about to secure your company’s next generation of talent.

5. Digital documents process reduces hard costs of paper, postage, and time to delivery

Relying on a mostly digital document management system also reduces the cost of hard collateral needs, things like paper, postage, and opportunity loss associated with delivery times. 

Transitioning to fully digital flows saves your company money over time. Paper reliance can fluctuate into a costly endeavor when you scale, especially when you consider a ream of paper is, on average, around $12.99. With an average office employee using close to 10,000 sheets or 20 reams of paper a year, paper costs can exceed $255 per person. That’s a lot of money for something that ends up in a filing cabinet or the trash.

As a matter of fact, around 20% of records are misfiled. It takes approximately ten minutes of labor time per paper document to retrieve, copy, and refile. According to a study by Price Waterhouse, it costs $20 of labor to file a document, $120 to find a misfiled document, and $220 to replace a lost document. With 20% of records misfiled, your business is taking on unnecessary productivity costs for something that could take seconds. One industry analyst firm, IDC, found that around $14,000 (per worker) in productivity costs are misspent looking for the right data/information.

When your company switches to a reliable lifecycle document management tool, you reduce the time lost and the cost spent. No need for staples, postage, delivery, etc., when you’ve got a reliable digital tool that organizes everything on your behalf with smart OCR technology. 

Final thoughts

Strategically thinking through a new employee onboarding process might seem like a lengthy endeavor, but getting organized early will actually save you time in the long run. Improved new hire onboarding is proven to increase long-term employee retention, and be a useful tool in your company’s reputation management efforts. Going digital will save your company money, and time, and help boost team productivity exponentially.