Paperless HR – Miracles Don’t Only Happen at Christmas

Christmas was just around the corner. Even the biggest workaholics were already thinking about wrapping up work at the office and heading home to wrap sarmi (Bulgarian stuffed cabbage rolls) by the Christmas tree. At that very moment, a pre-holiday promise arrived: freedom from unnecessary paper in the office, the recipe for the tastiest sarmi, and something more. It brought together over 150 people from different professional fields for a pre-holiday webinar. “Paperless HR – Reality or a Christmas Miracle?” was the gift from VEDA and eHR to all clients, partners, friends and curious innovators who wanted to join. On the morning of 12 December, Danail Koev from VEDA Accounting, Jean Egikyan from eHR and attorney Radoslava Makshutova from VEDA Legal unwrapped all the secrets of switching to electronic employee records.

How VEDA switched to paperless HR

VEDA Accounting is an accounting firm with a team of 30 to 40 people that handles a huge volume of documents. After 2–3 years of professional acquaintance, they decided to put their trust in eHR, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for digitalising employee records and other HR processes in Bulgarian companies of different sizes and industries. The eHR system is suitable for companies with around thirty employees, like VEDA, but also for those with three or even 300 employees. It works at any scale.

The opportunity to digitalise all HR processes appealed to Danail Koev a lot. By the time the collaboration with eHR began, the accounting firm had already dealt with most of its unnecessary paperwork. The mountains of folders in the office were gone. All that remained was to tackle the last head of the paper hydra – the employee records. Since 2018, the “Ordinance on the Type and Requirements for the Creation and Storage of Electronic Documents in the Employee’s Employment Record” has allowed this process to be digitalised as well.

What held VEDA back until they started working with eHR was the lack of internal resources to prioritise coordinating the change. However, the constant support of the eHR team made the transformation fast, reliable and painless. It took about a month of close cooperation between eHR and a VEDA employee responsible for the project, who was working on their other tasks and projects in the meantime.

The benefits of paperless HR

“Getting rid of paper turned out to be only a small part of the benefits,” says Danail. Digitalisation gave the accounting firm the push for a long-postponed, complete review of its employment documentation – job descriptions, internal rules and instructions, and remote work policies. During the switch to an electronic service, the update happened almost unnoticed. Some policies were written down, others were improved.

The requirement for employees’ consent or confirmation by signature on every document related to employment relationships or health and safety at work becomes much easier to meet when everything can be signed immediately and from anywhere. Implementing complete electronic employee records includes collecting the necessary consents and signatures on annexes and safety briefings. Thanks to this process, VEDA can now be proud of being fully compliant with all legal requirements.

For a company like VEDA that works with lots of numbers, a particular advantage of digitalisation is reducing the risk of errors to a minimum. Electronic employee records reduce this risk by 90–95%. Besides the direct benefits of saving time and avoiding problems, this result brings one more: employees are much calmer at work.

Hands-on experience with eHR

VEDA also shared several very practical aspects of the switch to electronic HR:

• It is easier to react quickly to situations without having to “chase” signatures.
• Backdating documents is impossible. For example, eHR does not allow leave with a past date (although it can be added manually).
• A clear process creates predictability and traceability.
• It eases the procedure of parting ways with employees, which is difficult for everyone involved anyway. The electronic service makes it possible to keep a record that the documents were served lawfully. Potential negative and extreme reactions from unpleasantly surprised employees are avoided. If a dismissed employee refuses to sign the documents, the delivery and the refusal are certified without the need for confirmation by two witnesses, which is required when documents are delivered on paper.

The eHR service helps not only in difficult or crisis situations. On the contrary, the feedback from new employees, who can review their employment documents calmly and on time in a digital environment, is positive. New hires are pleased and impressed by this opportunity.

The financial benefit is also worth mentioning. “We chose to work with eHR not only because we got along so well with your whole team, but because, unlike all other digital HR services, here we don’t have to pay a fee for every additional signature,” Danail shares in conclusion. The price of the service is the same regardless of the number of document signatures.

How the eHR system works

In addition to Danail’s candid story, Jean gave a short demonstration of how the system works. It showed that:

• For each employee, you can choose the type of profile (manager, regular, etc.) as well as what actions they can perform with documents.
• You can set up and use template documents, and also edit them for each specific employee when sending them.
• Employers are provided with the legally required qualified electronic signature (QES). The ordinance requires a simple electronic signature for employees. The eHR team goes a step further and, for greater legal certainty, provides every employee with a free advanced electronic signature (AES). Both parties in the employment relationship can give their consent this way simply by clicking the “Sign” button.
• Depending on the company’s needs, all processes can be bilingual.
• The system can also be used to create an absence calendar for the whole team. Integration with Google and Microsoft calendars is expected soon.

Paperless HR – legal aspects

Questions about the system’s legal compliance and the practices it allows were clarified by attorney Radoslava Makshutova. She confirmed that, under the ordinance mentioned above, all HR documents can be electronic, but the company can still decide for itself which ones to digitalise. This should be regulated in the Internal Labour Regulations, along with the questions of signing documents and how the system operates.

Attorney Makshutova went into more detail on the practices for electronic document exchange. It takes place via electronic registered delivery, where the documents stay in the system and there is no risk of them falling into the wrong hands. The recipient only gets a notification in their inbox that documents are available. The documents themselves are not sent by email. The recipient has to log in to the system to read, comment on and sign them.

All other documents accompanying an employment relationship can also be managed electronically. These include, for example, safety briefings and occupational health documents, as well as applications for tax relief for families with children and all documents before and during maternity leave.

The audience’s interest kept the event going beyond the scheduled time so that everyone’s questions could be answered. We will answer the most interesting and challenging questions in an upcoming post on our blog.

And here is the promised sarmi recipe, which is delicious not only at Christmas:

Read more useful articles:

Neoperl Bulgaria Minimizes the Risk of Errors with the eHR System

Yordan Rafailov of SoCyber: Before eHR, Some Processes Were Slow