Modern human resources work is not defined by access to digital channels for recruiting and application, but by day-to-day work with digital personnel documents. To optimally manage them, not only the filing and storing has to be improved, but also the entirety of the processes throughout the lifespan of documents. For this purpose, a digital personnel file has to tackle a lot of tasks regarding documents, forms and certificates: It has to record, create, manage, save and securely store and dispense them.
“Choosing to digitize personnel files is only the first step for companies. Many processes that were done manually before have to be digitized, too“, states Stefan Heins, managing director at Circle Unlimited. This is just one of the reasons why Circle Unlimited, provider of the digital personnel file cuSmarText HR, has recently decided to include OCR with AI abilities in their SAP integrated solution.
“What this means is that all incoming documents are automatically recognized, assigned and classified. The program is capable of learning and can be adapted to individual document characteristics of companies“, says Heins. For example in case of an employment contract, the program automatically recognizes that the document is, in fact, an employment contract and can even check if it was signed by the employee in question.
Digital payroll
More highlights which facilitate personnel work even further are the digital sending of payrolls, a job reference generator and, now very relevant, the display of file history. “The digital sending of payrolls is another step towards paperless human resources. If an employee chooses this option, he gets his monthly payroll via encoded email after choosing his individual password“, Heins explains.
A vast majority of written communication with employees consists of letters, messages and forms which are routinely based on the same patterns. In the course of introducing a digital file solution, it should be possible to generate them automatically based on texts and forms and to individualize the document with definable rules and requests. In this context, the automated generation of job references can be beneficial to many companies.
How can this work in a file solution? Pretty easily, Stefan Heins explains, “The human resources employee accesses a pool of predefined text passages. For grading the different areas of evaluation – from one to five – fitting text fragments are chosen. Together with the available data of the personnel file, a standardized yet personalized job reference document emerges.“ Thereafter, the generated documents ideally should archive themselves in Word, Excel or PDF format in the file and still be accessible and usable.
GDPR compliant
Personnel files contain a multitude of highly sensitive and personal data. In paper form, securing documents is often hard and not differentiated. “Therefore, our goal was that cuSmarText HR offers an extremely detailed authorization check on the basis of the SAP authorization concept. This check is not only necessary when accessing through the SAP system, but also through the internet or mobile apps“, Stefan Heins says. Furthermore, all inputs, changes and assets should be recorded in an audit-proof manner.
The digital personnel file is, of course, GDPR compliant. An integrated rule work offers the possibility to integrate life cycles, suspension periods and automated deletion mechanism for files, document classes and types. At predefined dates or upon expiration of certain deadlines files and documents are automatically cleaned up and deleted without the intervention of an employee.
That is, if no targeted non-disclosure notices due to certain exceptional circumstances have manually been set in place. Optionally, documents can be encoded so that even the access through functional groups can be limited with special authorization.
Well said, the application of ai in hr is a revolution altogether