“The ‘new normal’ isn’t necessarily a business world without working in an office, it’s just a world where we focus on work instead of the office.”
– Laurel Farrer, in an article published by Forbes.com. Laurel is a remote work strategist who collaborates with global organizations to start, strengthen, and leverage virtual workforces.
In 2018 nearly 3.2% of the American workforce was working remotely. With the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working became an inevitable normal, a necessity for organizations to survive. Employees showed an apparent inclination for WFH (Work From Home) policies, thanks to the many benefits they experienced. No commuting meant significant daily savings in time and money, and flexible timings meant an improved quality of family time. Most importantly, working remotely during the pandemic provided them with a safety net from infection while maintaining work continuity. Surveys suggest that by 2028, 73% of all teams will work remotely, indicating that WFH will become more widespread across industries and not be specific to certain types of companies and jobs.
Remote work is quickly becoming one of the most desirable benefits an employer can offer.
But are HR teams geared to support such a large number of remote workers? HR teams, in particular, will have to adapt their approaches so that remote employees and their organizations are set up for WFH success.
What changes will HR teams have to make to their essential functions and work processes to ensure employee productivity and organizational success with remote working?
Building a digital culture
Research by Gartner showed that 67% of business leaders agreed that their company must become significantly more digitized to remain competitive. The onus of creating an organization-wide digital culture lies with top management, but HR plays a significant role in ensuring it permeates down to the individual employee.
Embedding a digital culture can start small—even with processes as simple as digitizing employee and customer documents, vendor invoices, contracts and agreements. Scanning and storing documents on the cloud sets digitization rolling. HR can collaborate with functional leaders to understand any risks or challenges in implementing digital transformation projects. HR must work on increasing employee involvement with digitization projects through direct communication and responsibility allotment. Intelligent information management solutions such as electronic forms, eSignatures, cloud-based content management systems and business process automation will be essential to improve efficiency and productivity with remote working.
Virtual hiring & separation: Embrace HR automation
The pandemic forced a change in the way corporations hire and work. Job markets evolved, legacy jobs vanished, and new job functions appeared.
From identifying the right fit, interviews via video calls, and negotiating an offer, every process had to be completed virtually.
Going forward, in the new normal, HR teams will have to adapt their processes to complete most of their recruitment activities virtually. From onboarding to benefits to payroll instructions and procedures during employee separation—all activities will be remote and will benefit from automation. Adjusting hiring and onboarding processes is a complex task and involves more than just video calls or instant messaging. Hiring managers will need the training to carry out all these functions remotely. OnBase by Hyland is an employee information system ideal for automating human resources. It streamlines HR activities in day-to-day operations and triggers timely HR intimations and approvals.
It is a powerful enabler for the HR department, freeing them from mundane tasks to innovate and implement strategic initiatives like employee retention and culture building.
Technology & Training: Enabling remote work
Organizations will need to provide teams with the right technology to support the digital culture. Next, HR teams must identify who needs training on which technologies to set up the teams for success. Finally, HR must focus on motivating teams across the company to work collaboratively.
Vendor invoices, contracts, job applicant resumes, appointment letters, or correspondence must all be digitized and stored in a central sharable digital repository to enable WFH.
Typically, organizations need a content management system with collaborative, file-sharing capabilities, version control features, and strict access control features to support remote working teams.
ECM (Enterprise Content Management) solutions organize and manage all documents—whether in paper or digital formats, received via email or fax.
ECMs reduce time wastage of human capital, remove the cost of managing physical documents through their lifecycle, and keep documents secure and accessible to all.
Digitize the corporate mailroom
When teams work remotely, they need to maintain fast response times. But how do they achieve that if they do not have access to documents that come in by physical mail? Therefore, it is imperative to digitize all incoming paper documents as soon as they arrive at the office premises.
A digital mailroom does just that: all paper mail is converted to digital formats using imaging and advanced data capture techniques such as OCR, making them available electronically to remote employees.
Digitizing the corporate mailroom has benefits for customers, employees, and employers. The organization, on the whole, gains a competitive advantage with mailroom automation.
Empower employees through workflow automation
Workflow automation software designed with an understanding of the organization’s business and culture extends the capabilities of ECM. Automated workflows work seamlessly with your current IT systems for immediate improvements in your business processes.
Remote working HR teams benefit from using automated workflow management systems to enable a smooth self-service application process. AMI’s workflow management system helps HR gather all new hire documents and manage internal tasks for onboarding, and distribute and manage company-wide notifications and policies. They can manage off-boarding processes more efficiently and stay compliant with regulatory requirements.
In summary: Communication is HR’s key to success in WFM
Fear of new technology or processes creates resistance to change in most organizations. The feeling that technology can make your work process redundant is an added insecurity. HR must communicate to employees in the rank-and-file that the management’s sincere intention is to improve their work lives through technology. They must bring home the point that employees aid their own career development (not just organizational success) by contributing to the digitization initiative.
Talk to AMI to transform your HR processes and prepare for the new normal.
AMI helps your company go paperless with a range of document digitization services. Our software solutions streamline your HR processes, reduce costs, increase productivity, save time, and add efficiency to your organization. Contact us today for a free assessment of your document digitization needs. Get started today!