eBook: The ROI of Automated Onboarding

Intro

Noncompliant onboarding isn’t just risky — it’s expensive. In this e-book, we break down how automating the onboarding process helps mitigate compliance risk and reduces overall costs for HR.

Onboarding is a pivotal stage for organizations to secure a new employee’s loyalty and equip them with the tools to excel. It engages new hires, increases their comfort, and shapes the employee experience — but onboarding is about far more than that.

As an employer, onboarding marks the beginning of how you manage your compliance obligations, and for employees, onboarding serves as an introduction to managing the maze and potential pitfalls of workplace laws and regulations.

And it is a maze — there are forms and processes associated with everything from new-hire notifications, to leave management, to the constant concerns around I-9 filing. Good onboarding takes each of these individual pieces and puts it into an easily digestible format — which helps ensure a consistent and engaging experience while protecting your business from compliance risk.

Incorrect forms completion can put your company at risk.

From fines, penalties, and employee litigation, to a tarnished employer brand and more.

Despite the hazards, onboarding is still an area where many companies still rely on paper forms or manual processes, which:

Takes the employee out of the workplace
Saddles HR with mundane tasks and takes them away from strategic planning
Slows the time it takes to get a new hire contributing to the company
Compounds the risk of errors and noncompliance

Today’s HR organization is caught between having a smaller department and needing to reduce costs on the one hand, while meeting increasingly complex compliance demands on the other.

The answer is an onboarding system with automated document management to create a smoother workflow, boost engagement, enhance company performance, reduce risk of noncompliance, and save HR dollars.

Noncompliance and Onboarding

Where can compliance go wrong? In more areas of onboarding than you think.

Compliance comes into play in the information you give new hires about workplace privacy or other legal issues; any of the paperwork around job acceptance and pay agreement; work regulations; tax and identification forms; company badges; company email accounts; and more.

Some of the areas most at risk of noncompliance during onboarding are:

Gathering the seven points of personal information.
Organizations are required to report specific personal information to state agencies under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) — identical to the information collected on the federal Form W-4. A full checklist is available at this link.
Tax withholding and eligibility forms.

The IRS and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security require all new hires to verify their eligibility to work in the country. Within their first 48 hours on the job, a new hire must complete two forms: a W-4, Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate, and an I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification.Many states also require their own version of the W-4, or offer it as an option for calculating state income tax withholding.
State-specific new hire notification requirements.
This includes wage notification, paid sick leave, and maternity leave. These requirements:
– Are difficult to track and often ambiguous
– Must be implemented correctly to protect your organization
– Are compounded by confusion and risk for for multi-jurisdictional employers
– Often change depending on unique state regulations (see examples)
Leave and accommodation laws.
For example, Rhode Island recently passed pregnancy accommodation legislation: Employers must extend specific rights to employees who have a condition related to pregnancy or childbirth; compliance requires employers to notify new hires of their expanded rights.
Paid/earned sick leave.
For example, Oregon and Massachusetts have implemented new sick leave laws that include notification requirements, and other states introduced legislation to pass similar requirements (source: Corporate Compliance Insights).

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

What can mistakes cost you? More than you might imagine. Accuracy is the cornerstone of forms compliance, but employers are human. Mistakes happen. Unfortunately, inaccuracy at any point in the process can result in fines, penalties, or even employee litigation.

Where can threats come from? More places than you think.

Fines and penalties.

Governments have redoubled enforcement efforts:

Employers are more vulnerable than ever because governments have redoubled enforcement efforts, and plaintiffs’ attorneys are searching for potential violations to exploit.

Risks can include costly fines and penalties, tied directly to noncompliance:

Some apply under federal law, e.g., the civil penalty for a first violation of Title III of the ADA can be as high as $75,000; the penalty for a second violation is $150,000.
Some apply to only one state: Employers that do not give notice of the New York Wage Theft Prevention Act may have to pay damages of up to $50 per day, per employee (a maximum of $5,000 per employee in civil lawsuits filed by workers).

Employee litigation.

Wage and hours settlements cost employers more than $3.6 billion between 2007 and 2015.

Failing to provide proper state-required wage notification as part of onboarding can be significant in building a case for potential liability.
Failing to provide required notifications often leads to increased administrative scrutiny by either state or federal agencies.
Increased scrutiny makes you vulnerable to wage-and-hour noncompliance litigation.

Putting compliance on the back burner can cost you time, money, lost business — even your reputation. But making compliance a key part of your strategy can help circumvent those issues and improve your employer brand.

So, how can you create a compliant process and how does onboarding fit into the equation?

The Benefits of Doing it Right

Getting compliance right allows you to set your company up for success while sidestepping the pitfalls outlined in the last section. But getting there requires technology for automated document management as part of your automated onboarding system.

“Best-in-class companies are 80 percent more likely than all others (27 percent vs. 15 percent) to realize time and cost savings from automated records and compliance checks.”

Aberdeen Group

Best-in-class companies are 80 percent more likely than all others to realize time and cost savings from automated records and compliance checks — but more to our point here, best-in-class companies are far more likely to use automated documents management specifically to reduce HR overtime, employee processing time, and compliance costs.

Decreased HR Overtime

Use Automated Solutions

Don’t Use Automated Solutions

Decreased Processing Time

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Don’t Use Automated Solutions

Decreased Compliance Costs

Use Automated Solutions

Don’t Use Automated Solutions

Best-in-class companies are using automated solutions that meet ongoing compliance needs, while decreasing compliance costs and workload demands.

When HR goes digital, it’s able to:

Standardize processes and centralize employee information
Optimize the flow of requirements for new hires so they can provide the required information without feeling overwhelmed or unprepared
Receive notification of missing information before an employee’s record goes to the next step in the process or before a filing deadline is reached
Improve compliance without manually managing employee records

Eliminate Onboarding Risk and Reduce Costs

Click Boarding creates an employee onboarding experience that lets you manage your documentation electronically — reducing the chances of noncompliance and errors, getting more done with a smaller HR team, and maximizing the new-hire experience.

Through Click Boarding and its partners, you ensure safe, accurate completion of the W-4 and Form I-9, with E-Verify availability.

What’s more, the Click Boarding onboarding experience is personalized, guiding employees with self-service — they have access to the documents and information they need, when they need it. The platform streamlines document management with:

A central location for important documents, accessible at a click
Easy form completion to help new hires feel supported
Progress tracking

About Click Boarding

Click Boarding is an onboarding platform that takes the stress out of employees’ first days — and beyond. The platform delivers a guided experience that removes HR burdens and minimizes employee anxiety related to any transition or internal mobility, from being a new hire, to being promoted, to changing roles or offboarding.