Electronic HR Forms Whitepaper: eForm-Connect

How to Eliminate Paper Forms within your Human Resource Department

(Why Paper Forms for the Human Resource Department are increasingly a thing of the past)

By Dennis C Lima

This paper explains why and how the high cost and unnecessary tedium of paper form processing in Human Resource management can be eliminated.

After reading this report, you will know:

• How the Internet and secure communication technologies enable near total accessibility to form processing systems;
• Why the ESIGN Legislation Act of 2000 provides better signature authentication than the paper and pen; and
• How work flow and data quality are enhanced in measurable ways.
  

This advisory establishes, without ambiguity that: It is both legally and technically feasible to computerize your paper forms now.

When Human Resource managers consider implementing a paperless form processing system, two questions are raised, one technical and one legal:

1. After we capture forms and data in a computer, how do we collect and process it?
2. For forms that require one or more signatures, how do we implement electronic signatures in a legally sufficient way?

1. The Technical Answer: Secure communication technologies found on the Internet.

 The reach and reliability of the Internet enable the vast majority of organizations to connect to and interact with huge stores of information and conduct commerce with any business offering an electronic store front.

Financial institutions and commercial entitles have perfected the implementation of secure communication technologies that far exceeds the secure communication requirements of most Human Resource form processing systems. To state in a different way: The technology used to secure billions of dollars of trade daily on the Internet are available for Human Reource form processign systems, although it is rarely needed.

Even if an organization's internal computing network is not connected to the internet, the same secure communication technologies are available for implementation. With an organization's computers securely networked, capturing forms and form data into a database are reduced to a few points and clicks of a mouse. For data is now available for reporting, analysis, and integration into other systems without redundant, manual data entry.

Hence, it is certainly technically feasible to digitize your paper forms and make them available on your employees computers for fill out and submission.

2. The Legal Answer ESIGN Legislation Act of 2000

Human Resource managers often grapple with the concept of electronic signatures: how do we guarantee the validity and authenticity of electronic signatures AND make sure they are "legally sufficient"?

The federal ESIGN Legislation Act of 2000 put this issue to rest. Still there is confusion and a resulting uneasiness with implementing electronic signatures.

The confusion is easy to understand. The first generation of electronic signature solutions revolved around the PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) technology. Industry titan Adobe offers PKI technology with their ubiquitous Acrobat product. This is how most people are first exposed to electronic signatures. The technical complexity and tedious implementation requirements are, in a word, frightening.

The ESIGN Legislation Act of 2000 defines electronic signatures as "an electronic sound, symbol or mark attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record executed or adopted by a person with intent to sign the record." That's what happens when you buy a book on Amazon.com

Interestingly, because authenticated data are captured in the information system supporting electronic signatures, electronic signatures have, in fact, a higher degree of authenticity than signatures made with pen and paper. Things like white-out and forgeries are intractable problems for paper based signatures.

Hence, it is certainly legally feasible (and "legally sufficient") for digitize paper form to have valid, authentic signature attached to it.

So, How Would it Work ?

It does not take much to imagine how you can start automating your Human Resource Department form-based work flow and seamlessly capture form data along the way.

Here's how a common Human Resource Department work flow scenario can become paperless.

Example: The Time Off Request Form

Instead of pulling a Time Off Request Form out of a desk drawer, an employe now can click on the company's HR support website and access the digitized version of the form. This digitized version looks just like the paper version BUT the form is a lot easier to fill out because:

1. Balloon help (pop-up help text) displays how much vacation much vacation time the employee has remaining this year.
   
2. The employee's name and start date as well as the current date are already pre-filled.
   
3. The employee can electronically sign the request.
   
4. Instead of putting the form in an internal mail envelope and dropping it in the supervisor's mail slot, the employee clicks on the 'Email Form' button, select's his / her supervisor's email address from a list presented in a dorp down box, then clicks the 'Send' key.
   
5. The request appears in the supervisor's email inbox. The email provides a link which brings the supervisor to the same electronic form (that was signed by the employee) on the HR web site (after logging onto the website).
   
6. The supervisor approves the request by signing at the appropriate spot, then saves the form.
   
7. Saving the form triggers an email alert that informs the employee that the request has been granted AND simultaneously updates the employee's vacation time balance in the HR database.
   

Take the Next Step:

 Call us at 877-426-7338 or email us at info@eformconnect.com  for more information on what it would take to get rid of costly paper forms in your HR Department!