HR departments are successfully taking the leap to set up a paperless office. According to a recent survey conducted by Archive Systems, Inc. a leading provider of Unified Document Management solutions, during the 2015 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual conference revealed that 77 percent of HR departments are successfully going paperless.

77 percent of the HR professionals surveyed, agreed in unison that they would prefer to make most of both mediums – with half paper and half digital or all digital. A minimal 23 percent relied on solely paper as a means to HR administration and effective management. This shows that organisations have now embraced digital HR in a big way.

Key findings from this survey are:

• HR Managers who said their HR files were more than 50% digital, reported spending 35% of their time on administrative paperwork, a reduction of nearly half compared to industry surveys that have found 60% of HR resources are spent on administrative activities.
• Hybrid environments, both digital and paper, are making the greatest progress toward going paperless. However, the biggest issue is digital documents existing in multiple systems instead of being accessible from one company wide repository.
• HR Managers dealing with only paper records are still spending a majority of their time on mundane tasks and focusing less on key business initiatives.
• HR Managers that still have paper records are on average 50% confident that they have all the necessary documents for audits and compliance, but companies that are totally digital are on average over 70% confident.

See: What Should Be on the Priority List of HR Department?

While advancements in technology are prompting many HR departments to shift functions to go digital thus avoiding the hassles of dealing with paperwork. This saves on costs and time involved in managing HR functions. Productivity and efficiency are the key reasons for HR departments to go paperless. Also paperless systems reduce the storage space required to store documents and endless records.

Furthermore, software systems designed today are made to accommodate the vast and changing array of compliance issues and in cases, also alert HR managers if an employee’s extended work hours can have negative implications on productivity, overall job satisfaction, result in burnout and brain drain also mental health issues.

However, going paperless comes with a fair share of risks. “If you go outside for a paperless solution, there will be security and integration issues,” said Morgan Yeates, research director for the HR business process outsourcing market at Connecticut-based IT advisory company Gartner.

Security has been a major concern for HR departments to transit public data to the cloud and use software that do not keep the privacy and confidential information of a company intact. Databases housed within the company face dangers of being hacked and at times, employers might get access to private employee information such as medical records.

Data needs to be backed up all time to prevent from data theft and loss. Security up gradation is a must in cases where employees access company databases on private networks or remotely through mobile devices.

Also read: 5 Tools to Improve HR Departments