ECM Personnel File Module

Personnel files are treasure troves bursting with surprises. Instead of being strictly organised, they all too often reveal a jumble of stapled, paper-clipped or wildly fluttering documents. No wonder, then, that staff in HR departments are making vociferous demands to digitise these documents and transfer them to a tidy, sensibly structured digital personnel file. This is exactly what ECM solutions make possible.

The abbreviation ECM stands for Enterprise Content Management. These systems focus on capturing, managing, storing, maintaining and distributing documents in digital form. At the same time, electronic workflows are defined in ECM systems which, for example, route sick leave notifications through the system in as automated a manner as desired. Since ECM systems are constructed as modules, companies do not have to convert their processes in one fell swoop, but can digitise step by step instead. Different workflows can also be defined for different processes, and it is this flexibility that makes ECM solutions stand out. Stefan Halupka, National Sales Director at TA Triumph-Adler, recommends “identifying the area and process with the greatest added value for a pilot project and starting there”. More often than not, this is digital personnel files.

From personnel planning and management to payroll accounting and further training measures, the tasks performed by the HR department are heavy on documents. This makes it all the more gratifying when the ECM solution “thinks for itself”, as these two examples will demonstrate. A reminder function automatically reminds you ahead of time of the expiry date of fixed-term employment contracts. Coordinating the annual staff performance reviews is also made easier, as appointments can be coordinated individually and automatically entered in the calendar.

Digital personnel files fulfil a long list of requirements in the ECM system:

• Central digital management of all personnel files with individual register structure and integrated full text search
• Mandatory file structure that can be adapted as needed
• Automatic filing of documents with barcode integration based on document types and metadata in the file structure
• Access or read permission by authorisation key
• Log of the different versions
• Comprehensive rights concept
• Audit-compliant archiving
• Template and deadline management
• Monitoring of mandatory documents (such as employment contracts)
• Follow-up if required

Data privacy? No problem!

There is no problem with data privacy in digital personnel files, by the way, as all documents - from employment contracts to holiday slips - are in one place, which means access to them can be controlled granularly by means of authorisations. When combined with an audit-compliant document management system as the backbone of the ECM solution, this also ensures that personnel documents are stored in a way that is unchangeable, legally valid and versioned. What's more, the paper files can be dispensed with..

Would you like to find out more about the ECM Digital Personnel File Module?