Digital HR & Automation:
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Take Your New Normal
to a Higher Standard
A Guide to Implementing a Holistic Automation
Solution for your Post-Pandemic HR World
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
PART 1
A Quick Overview of Workflow Automation
PART 2
Build Risk Management and Compliance Into Your Processes
With Workflow Automation
PART 3
Focus on People, Not Paperwork, By Automating Employee
Lifecycle Management
PART 4
Elevate the Entire Employee Experience
PART 5
Implement a Long-Term HR Workflow Automation Solution
PART 6
Workflow Automation: Implementation is Critical for Your
Post-COVID Organization
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4
6
8
10
12
14
3
INTRODUCTION
While going digital was growing in popularity before the pandemic,
COVID-19 made this trend a necessity. The temporary shift to a remote
workforce is now becoming permanent — once employees have
experienced the comfort of working from their couch, they don’t want to
go back.
Similarly, the automation revolution in HR that has been happening over
the past decade has become the new norm. Your employees expect digital,
automated solutions throughout the employee lifecycle, from onboarding
paperwork to performance reviews to exit interviews, and everything in-
between.
Long gone are the days when people filled out a new employee form,
scanned it, sent it to their boss to sign, the boss scanned it, the HR
administrator signed it, and they scanned and uploaded it to the intranet.
That sentence alone is headache-inducing — so is holding onto antiquated
paper or email-based processes, and piecing together makeshift, piecemeal
digital solutions that don’t play nicely with each other.
With digital being the new normal, developing a long-term automation
strategy is a necessity moving forward. HR influences every aspect of
your organization, and nurturing the department with the right tools is
essential.
Full-scale workflow automation enables your HR team to become a more
strategic partner, focusing on people instead of paperwork and setting the
entire organization up for long-term success.
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PART 1
Take Your New Normal to a Higher Standard
Automation
We know you’ve probably implemented some elements of automation
here and there, especially because you’ve had to find digital solutions
for your remote workforce. Maybe you digitized some key processes,
like employee onboarding and offboarding due to the pandemic. That’s
a step in the right direction, but it’s ultimately not sustainable for your
organization’s long-term success and growth.
Implementing a holistic HR workflow automation solution doesn’t just
digitize your existing processes. Instead, it completely transforms your
organization.
Workflow Automation: A Basic Definition
While you may have a basic understanding of workflow automation, either
from reading about the “automation revolution” in HR or by implementing
some automation tools, here’s how we define it at OnTask:
Workflow automation is a way of taking a
company’s processes, defining the steps that are
involved, and setting up automated actions
to make them structured and repeatable.
Workflow automation streamlines manual and
paper-based processes to increase productivity
and efficiency in the workplace.
Sounds simple enough, right? Workflow automation
is a perfect fit for the processes and paperwork that
HR manages on a daily basis.
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The Benefits of Automation
While the benefits of automation may seem obvious, it’s essential to
recognize them to understand just how important it is to implement a
holistic automation solution. After all, with makeshift processes that are
only somewhat automated, you don’t get to reap the full benefits of truly
automated workflows. In addition, it can be confusing for employees on
what to expect.
Here are the benefits of workflow automation:
• Risk
• Frustration
• Duplicate efforts
• Errors
• Paperwork
• Manual processes
• Time and costs
Reduce
• Output
• Productivity
• Accountability
Increase
• Performance trends
• Process barriers and bottle-
necks
Identify
Improve
• Compliance
• Process barriers and bottle
necks
Remove
While these benefits are more general, and apply to workflow automation
in any industry or work environment, automation can make a huge impact
in three specific areas that HR needs help with most:
1. Compliance and risk management
2. Employee lifecycle management
3. Employee engagement
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PART 2
HIPAA
Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA),
authorized parties should be the only individuals with access to a patient’s
health records. This includes the patient, healthcare workers working
with the patient, and individuals the patient specifically designates (such
as family members). HIPAA compliance covers all businesses that deal
with health information, such as dermatology clinics, general practices,
radiology clinics, and healthcare data centers, to name a few.
SOC 2
SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls) is an auditing procedure that
ensures data is protected based on five principles — (1) security, (2)
availability, (3) processing integrity, (4) confidentiality, and (5) privacy.
Being SOC 2 compliant means that an organization keeps sensitive data
private and secure while it’s at rest or in transit.
Having these compliance standards built into your workflow automation
solution means that achieving compliance and reduced risk will be an
easy, automated part of your operations.
Build Risk Management and Compliance Into
Your Processes With Workflow Automation
Reducing risk and meeting compliance standards is an essential part
of what HR brings to every organization. With the shift to hybrid and
digital workplaces comes complications regarding risk management and
compliance. New processes are needed to protect sensitive information
– all while making employees feel comfortable and secure. HR has to step
up to the plate and ensure compliance regulations are being met across
the organization, collaborating with IT and legal.
HR’s Essential Role in Compliance
& Risk Management
One primary role of the HR team is mitigating risk and ensuring compliance
in all employee matters, including hiring, payroll, risk and safety, benefits,
employee relations, and termination. HR also ensures compliance in
various non-HR requirements, such as workplace safety requirements,
data security regulations, and other general areas of business compliance.
Here are some key compliance requirements that HR departments need
to be aware of across different documents and forms, especially as
paperwork gets digitized.
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How Workflow Automation Reduces Risk and
Cultivates Compliance
Digitizing HR paperwork and automating processes reduces risk and
cultivates compliance in a number of ways.
Workflow automation...
• Increases the level of visibility and transparency into all of your
paperwork and processes because everything is viewable and findable

in one dashboard. For example: Time-stamped action history allows
you to identify bottlenecks and ensure deadlines are met.
• Allows HR to focus attention on meeting new compliance standards. For
example: Remember the GDPR Compliance headache of 2018? Imagine
if your HR documents processes were already all in one spot, so you
could easily review them to ensure they were in compliance with new
regulations.
• Enables access segmentation so that you can set permissions and roles
on sensitive documents. For example: If your employee evaluation
process involves peer review and manager review, you can ensure that
the manager can review all evaluation forms while peers can only view
their own.
• Ensure data security and accuracy with standardized forms and version
control. For example: When filling out new-hire paperwork, employees
can provide any sensitive information, such as financial or personal
health data, in a locked and secure form — no back-and-forth emailing
needed.
COVID-19 Vaccination Tracking
A seamless employee vaccination roll-out is essential for
organizations to get back to normal. HR plays a key role in this
effort, and can benefit from an automated workflow to make
sure everything runs smoothly and safely.
USE CASE
Launch Workflow
Provide Proof of Vaccination
Employee Exemption
Form Fill
Exemption Form
Sent to HR Dept.
HR Signature & Approval
Exemption Status Sent to
Employee & Supervisor
Employee Fills Proof of Vaccine
Form and Uploads CDC Card
Request Exemption
If One Dose
Employee Fills, Signs, and
Certifies Vaccine Proof
If Two Doses
Employees Sent Email to
Complete Workflow Once
Final Shot is Received
Email Reminder Set
Employee Uploads
Second CDC Shot Record
Employee Fills, Signs, and
Certifies Vaccine Proof
Form Automatically
Routed to HR for Review
Form Automatically Routed
to HR for Review
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PART 3
Focus on People, Not Paperwork,
By Automating Employee Lifecycle Management
Recruitment
Once a time-consuming process, much of recruitment can easily be
automated, lowering cost-per-hire and time-to-hire.
• Make the job application easy, with digital, mobile-friendly forms
• Streamline the screening process with automated reminders
• Track applications and provide candidates with transparency on their
stage in the process with a visible dashboard
Onboarding
Once you bring a new candidate on board, you can spend more time
sharing company culture and getting to know them, and less time on
mountains of paperwork.
• Digitize financial documents like W-9 forms, as well as other new hire
surveys and forms
• Automate an applicant’s ability to proceed in the onboarding process
with conditional logic
Employee lifecycle management is another key aspect of HR operations. From initial recruiting to exit interviews, HR teams
have the opportunity to focus on the human aspect of every touchpoint by automating manual processes and tedious tasks.
Automation Throughout the Employee Lifecycle
Paperwork and processes throughout the employee lifecycle can be streamlined via automation.
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Development
This stage, in addition to the HR processes employees encounter on
a weekly or daily basis, consists of ways to automate professional
development, as well.
• Simplify your employees’ evaluation process with digital performance
review forms
• Streamline leave management, including paid time-off and vacation
requests, as well as timesheet approvals
• Encourage professional development with easy application forms and
automated approvals
Retention
Streamlining and simplifying common HR processes is already one way to
retain top talent. However, there are additional retention strategies that
can be automated.
• Create and automate a workflow that asks for employee feedback in
a digital form and inputs results into a transparent dashboard based on
tenure and other factors
• Allow employees (with appropriate access) to view HR forms and
processes
Separation
The final stage of the employee lifecycle — offboarding — is an opportunity
to truly learn from and improve upon your HR practices. It’s also an
important time to ensure that measures are taken so that the rest of your
team is set up for future success.
• Reroute workflows to ensure proper access segmentation and approvals
• Prepare for the exit interview with digital forms and documents
Employee Onboarding
Onboarding a new employee is an exciting time, but it can also
mean a lot of paperwork. Workflow automation can play a key
role to make the new hire process run as smoothly as possible
so that you can focus on the hire, not their paperwork.
USE CASE
Launch Workflow
Employee Sent New Hire
Forms to Fill
Completed Forms are Sent to HR
to Download and Review
Employees Notified on
Status of Documents
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PART 4
Elevate the Entire Employee Experience
As automation and digitization have become more widespread, these movements have enabled HR to become a strategic
partner to the organization. Instead of “HR Management,” many teams now have names like “People Operations.” This reflects
the growing importance of HR, even in a time of remote and hybrid work — HR must still provide an exceptional employee
experience to attract and retain top talent.
The employee experience is critical
With digital workforces, the employee experience is more important than
ever. Workers have realized how much they need flexibility, security and
stability from their employers, and it’s been HR’s job to deliver on that
need throughout the pandemic.
Whether employees stay fully remote, go back to the office, or choose
something in between — a hybrid workplace — the employee experience
needs to incorporate a digital solution that works for everyone. Workflow
automation can help make that experience as seamless as possible for
employees working in the office, from home, and everything in-between.
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Automation makes the employee experience
more human
Many people may hear “automation” and worry about their jobs getting
replaced, even though automation has been growing in HR for over a
decade. In reality, a successfully implemented workflow automation
solution gives workers more time to have personal interactions with their
colleagues and develop relationships.
That leaves more time for person-to-person interaction, and helps foster
increased collaboration and greater connections between employees and
HR. Workers also have more time to think creatively because they don’t
have to spend as much time on administrative tasks, and can instead
focus on more complex tasks.
With workflow automation, HR teams are also able to bring personalized
support to employees around the clock. Instead of having to schedule
a phone call or face-to-face meeting to fill out paperwork, employees
can access what they need at any time. Having everything in one place
makes it easier for new employees to settle in, and also provides greater
transparency across the company.
In addition, workflow automation gives HR teams more time to solve
employee conflicts and be human-oriented, nurturing an overall better
company culture. All of these opportunities strengthen employee
engagement and empowerment.
PTO Requests
Digitizing and automating simple processes, like PTO requests,
may not seem like a big deal. In reality, doing so frees up time
for employees to focus on their more important work, instead
of searching for the right forms, following up for approvals, and
typing out emails. Using conditional logic, automated reminder
notifications, and streamlined routing measures turns a time-
consuming process into a seamless one.
USE CASE
Launch Workflow
Employee Fills Form with PTO
Request Details
Denied
Approved
Email Automatically Sent
to Employee with Decision
and Denial Reason
Form Submitted to HR to
Approve or Deny
Approved
Denied
Notice of Approval is
Emailed to Employee
HR Member Prompted to Fill
Form with Denial Reason
Email Automatically Sent
to Employee with Decision
and Denial Reason
Form Submitted to Supervisor to
Approve or Deny
HR Member Prompted to Fill
Form with Denial Reason
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PART 5
Implement a Long-Term Workflow
Automation Strategy
Transitioning to a new system can be difficult, especially in a workplace
where things have been shifting unpredictability due to the pandemic.
While changing to a new system isn’t always easy, it’s worth it in the long-
term to implement a holistic workflow automation strategy for your HR
department. Here are strategies for getting employee buy-in and alleviating
some of the growing pains that come with transitioning.
Getting Organizational Buy-In
If you haven’t done so already, securing organizational buy-in on workflow
automation is key for ensuring long-term success. An important part of
doing this is showing how implementing workflow automation aligns with
your HR goals, which could be everything from a quicker recruitment cycle
to increased retention; it can even align with your organization’s goals as a
whole, such as greater productivity and reduced error.
Do this by involving primary stakeholders in your workflow automation
implementation project, including:
• HR managers and administrators:
Your HR team should, of course, be well-represented in these discussions
— everyone from the Chief Human Resources Officer to workforce
administrators.
• Employee end-users:
Involving employees from different departments and varying levels of
tenure can help you factor in the employee experience from square one
of your workflow project. Incorporating employees into the process can
also bring important process improvements to light.
• Leadership:
Senior leaders are important to get buy-in from for any new
tool, but especially in a transformative workflow automation platform.
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Identify & Document Key Processes
After getting organizational buy-in on implementing a workflow automation
system, now’s the time to identify all processes that can be streamlined
with automation. You can do this by asking yourself questions like:
• How long does this process take?
• How many people are involved?
• How often do you have to check in on the status?
• How often is data entered incorrectly?
Identifying these pain points, as well as any human elements that need
to be considered, is crucial for successful implementation. Document
the state of your current processes and then discuss the ideal, future
automated state with the appropriate internal stakeholders.
Determine Key Platform Features
As you seek the right workflow automation system for your HR processes,
there are some important features that you should consider:
• Easy customization
• No-code, drag-and-drop interface
• Ready-made templates for your most common use cases
• Integrations and interoperability
• Conditional and parallel branching
• Reporting dashboards
• Fillable digital forms
• Automated emails
• Role-based access, security and permissions
• Easily shareable links
• Required and customizable form fields
• Document storage
• Reusable templates
• Comprehensive support
• Built-in task reminders
• Secure eSignatures
• SOC 2, HIPAA and FERPA compliance
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PART 6
Workflow Automation: Implementation is
Critical for Your Post-COVID Organization
COVID-19 has turned the workplace upside down, propelling HR processes
and employee expectations years forward in a matter of months. Instead
of just surviving on makeshift solutions and partial digitization, your
organization can thrive with OnTask, a holistic workflow automation
solution. By automating administrative tasks and streamlining processes,
your HR team can become a greater strategic partner to the organization
and elevate the employee experience.
About OnTask
OnTask is a cloud-based, mobile friendly platform that connects forms,
digital documents and eSignatures through workflow automation.
Compliant with industry-leading security standards, OnTask is an all-in-one
workflow automation solution designed to streamline crucial processes for
HR and other business functions. OnTask solves for common workplace
inefficiencies with easy sharing options, automated emails, built-in
reminders, legally binding signatures and more. Our workflow template
library, featuring common HR use cases, allows you to easily transform
your disjointed processes into seamless, automated workflows.
HR Workflow Automation
Made Simple
Quickly turn paper based processes, forms and
documents, into digital workflows. OnTask is a
cost effective, scalable solution, perfect for small,
medium and growing businesses.
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www.ontask.io | 813.513.2774 | info@ontask.io
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