Credit unions everywhere are relying on evolving technology to attract and maintain members. However, few organizations are taking full advantage of how technology can affect HR and the resulting effects on members and service.

HR wants candidates who will be invested in your credit union and go above and beyond to get the job done, ensure member satisfaction and, ultimately, impact membership dividends. To help HR reach its goals, new technology isn't necessarily required. One of the most cost-effective options is to leverage the capabilities of your existing document management or enterprise content management solution.

Recruiting

Your ECM solution captures and stores applications and resumes. With that applicant information centrally located, readily available and easy to find, everyone on the HR team has the information they need, when they need it. Equipped with all the relevant information, they make smarter hiring decisions before the competition does.

Once you've chosen a candidate, document templates generate the offer letter, route it through approvals, and track changes by managers so your credit union quickly sends the offer letter. This allows recruiters to spend more time identifying the best candidates for jobs and less time organizing paperwork and supporting documentation.

Onboarding

ECM gives HR personnel the tools they need to better manage the onboarding process and provide new employees with smooth transitions. By providing HR with a holistic view of all related information in a single location, staff easily tracks the entire onboarding process and monitors tasks across departments. Through automation, increased visibility and centralized information management, new employees are ready for work on day one.

Policies and Procedures

When you store HR policies and procedures on paper, ensuring employees review and acknowledge these documents is time consuming and prone to error. And the last thing you want to do is frustrate promising new team members.

Using your ECM solution, your HR department efficiently creates, distributes and tracks employee acknowledgement of policies and procedures. It also reduces associated administrative tasks such as filing, copying and mailing documents. That makes everyone at the table a winner.

With this documented proof of both policy distribution and employee sign-off, organizations strengthen compliance and minimize liability while holding employees accountable.

HR's applicability for ECM has mainly grown due to legal and compliance reasons, such as protection against age discrimination lawsuits or certifying an employee's receipt of a required form. But it also involves the growing need for efficiencies in the storage and processing of documents in personnel offices. From recruiting and onboarding to payroll and records management, ECM manages documents and processes so HR can focus on employees, not paper.

The Fitbit helps us focus on our fitness, but let's not forget about the tools that help us focus on the heart of our credit unions – our workforce.

Michelle Shapiro is financial services marketing manager for Hyland, creator of OnBase. She can be reached at 440-788-6803 or [email protected].