3 New Hire Mistakes That HR Onboarding Software Can Fix

Starting work with a new employer is a big deal to a new employee. That goes without saying. Not so widely recognized is how big of a deal it is to the Human Resources and Admin teams within the new employer. These are the folks typically tasked with procuring all of the documentation and resources for new hires.

While most new hires are focused on making a great first impression with their bosses and peers, they don’t always seem to be as focused on doing the same with HR. At least that’s how it seems when looking at new hire paperwork. Below are three of the most common mistakes newly hired employees make with their onboarding documents, and how implementing HR onboarding software can address them:

HR Mistakes: Missing documents

This is, by far, the most common frustration for HR staff coordinating new hire activities. In many cases, new employees feel overwhelmed by paperwork. It’s easy for them to misplace a document. If they work off-site and have to fax or scan/email their paperwork, it’s common for pages to stick together, etc. Once this happens, the burden falls back to the human resources team to track down those missing documents in a timely fashion. For organizations hiring a handful of people a year, this is an annoyance, but can be managed. For those hiring at higher volume, it can be nearly impossible. Most onboarding software tools resolve this easily by allowing both the new hire and the HR team to see what documents have been completed vs. those still outstanding. Communication between HR and the new hire may also typically be automated within onboarding software, providing added efficiency.

HR Mistakes: Documents completed incorrectly

Here’s another common struggle for HR team members. Many statutory documents like the I-9, W-4, state withholding forms and WOTC forms are very confusing for new hires. For some, this could be their first job. For others, it may have been years since they completed forms like these. Regardless of the situation, it’s rare that new hires will get these documents completed correctly on their own. Some organizations have HR staff meet with each new hire to complete these documents, increasing the level of accuracy. Unfortunately, this is time-consuming and unproductive — that’s why most organizations don’t do this. Paperless HR onboarding software addresses this by greatly simplifying the data gathering process. Many leading web-based solutions will gather information from new hires in an interview-type fashion — much in the same way tax preparation software gathers information needed for your 1040 form. Then, these tools auto-populate both the statutory forms and an organization’s unique forms with the information collected from the “interview.” This dramatically reduces mistakes, as new hires no longer must understand documents and/or where certain pieces of information belong on given forms.

Unsigned new hire paperwork

Hard to believe, but true. Sometimes this happens due to a simple oversight from the employee. More often, it’s not clear to the individual where a signature is required for given documents. Using onboarding software again alleviates this issue. By utilizing electronic signatures and the auto-population of document fields, paperless onboarding tools make this type of mistake virtually impossible. New hires are able to see fully-completed documents and indicate their consent within the solution. The onboarding software then records their electronic signature and affixes it in the proper area of each document. Simple for the new employee, and less work for the human resources administrators.

An effective employee onboarding application should fix these mistakes, create a more positive experience for new hires, and improve efficiency for the HR team. To learn more about ExactHire’s OnboardCentric portal, please visit our employee onboarding software product page today.

Image credit: Stupid Garbage Compactor by JD Hancock (contact)