Recent years have brought about a golden age of technology, and the many improvements that we have borne witness to have revolutionised our daily lives and – importantly – the way we work. It is of paramount importance that we move with the times, as tempting as it can be to stick to your old tried and trusted ways - they simply won’t be that relevant for much longer. Tech is constantly changing the way we work, making it more efficient and easier to use – all of which is slowly pushing out the ways of yesteryear.
One of the most important parts of your IT landscape that needs to be updated to operate in the most modern way possible is the management of documents. You need to use a modern system like SharePoint in Microsoft 365 in order to guarantee the safety of your documents when they are being used and shared.
Now, you either manage your documents well or you don’t. If you get it right your files will be safe, secure, easy to navigate, and easily accessible for those that have access. Get it wrong and you will definitely notice as your business will suffer, with all the problems potentially rubbing off on your workforce and in turn the bottom line that you are able to achieve. Most businesses unfortunately seem to be experiencing the latter.
Let’s take a look at the challenges that companies in recruitment face daily, and the things you may be doing wrong that are causing you problems.
The challenges you face daily
Paper files
I know it is very doubtful that in today’s world you are only using paper files, but some struggle to irradicate paper documents completely. Paper needs to go. We are living in a technological age of untold possibilities, so hard copies of paperwork have become unnecessary. Understandably, many are still concerned about the security of digital record keeping, the potential for a data breach, and for some there is the concern of employees having access to data that is out of their pay grade. It seems like, because paper files are literally in your hand, they are more secure, but, in reality, paper documents are far more susceptible to privacy and security risks, not to mention their vulnerability to errors and natural or man-made disasters (when something as simple as spilling a glass of water could ‘delete’ precious data forever).
Many are also finding it hard to manage documents when they arrive from multiple sources at different times (coming in via mail, email, web forms, file downloads – and for those very few that still use it – fax). Even though most of us have already converted the majority of our records to digital, some are still receiving paper from clients and others. This allows paper to continue being a constant in the workplace - which in turn creates an environment of chaos, with some records being kept on paper and others on a digital environment, making it impossible to manage documents just because no one knows where anything is.
Record retention
Every business in the world has many rules and regulations to abide by, and HR and Recruitment is no different. Record retention is a big issue. Some legislation requires you to store different types of documents in a different way to others, and some employee records must be filed and maintained separately, making the managing of all this personally very difficult!
SharePoint comes with an intuitive interface that allows you to classify your documents automatically, automatic document classification applies machine learning or other technologies to automatically classify documents. Once you have set your parameters manual organisation can become a thing of the past. As an example, you get 200 applicants to a job, and traditionally your team would have to spend hours sifting through CV’s to see who best fits the role, but now you can set parameters that look out for certain key words on a document. This allows the selection process to be sped up and your team’s time to be better spent in just looking at the applicants that actually stand a chance of getting the role.
Compliance
To remain compliant and avoid any legal ramifications, you and your team must properly and consistently manage, store, and retain documents according to compliance requirements. It doesn’t sound too hard when you say it like that but break it down and you will see just how difficult this is. Ask yourself:
What documents do I need to keep?
How long must I keep them? And where?
Who should be granted or refused access?
Is there more than one document and are they stored in multiple locations?
How secure are we in the eventuality of an attempted cyber breach?
We doubt you can confidently answer all of those questions straightaway – and they are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself to be sure you are managing documents safely and adhering to compliance requirements. You need to use a digital solution that can evolve according to ever changing compliance requirements.
Old file servers – the problems
Most have made some sort of a transition to digital means, but just haven’t kept up with the times. Old file servers pose many problems to the ways a modern team should be working – for example, they require your team to email important documents to one another - sounds okay, right? Wrong, because modern technology irradicates this laborious and time-consuming task, allowing you to be more productive with your time.
Old file servers make it impossible to know what is happening and when in your organisation, making for a disjointed workplace and processes. In a modern business you can’t just go into your cubicle at 9am and leave at 5pm without having communicated with any of your colleagues – business owners have realised that, for a modern business to be successful, it is essential that your team work in conjunction with each other. Collaboration and communication lead to improved productivity and results.
Simultaneously working on documents is not possible on traditional servers. The modern age of work has rapidly become based around an at least partially remote working team, so it is essential that efficiency and productivity don’t suffer because of it. Teams need to be able to make edits and work on documents simultaneously no matter where they are on the globe.
SharePoint is the number one choice to make all your modern plans a reality.
SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform, most commonly purchased for its document management and storage system. SharePoint is configurable and can be used for a wide variety of tasks - this is why it has an astonishing 190 million users spread across approximately 200,000 organisations around the world! That many successful businesses can’t be wrong, can they?
