Today’s human resources (HR) professionals are expected to deliver on more fronts than ever before. From struggling to onboard new hires to finalizing contracts, there is a lot to keep track of. But when was the last time upper management meaningfully addressed issues that cause you regular headaches?

DottedSign hears you. We know that HR employees want to improve their efficiency, productivity, and quality of life. So we surveyed professionals like yourself to get the full picture.

Altogether, our survey respondents boast a combined 400+ years of experience across 15 different industries. Everyone from frontline HR managers to chief HR officers chimed in. They provided us with insight into exactly what issues HR professionals need solved. 

Here is what we found.

From overworking to cybersecurity, these are HR’s biggest problems

While each person, team, and company has their own challenges, the feedback is clear: HR professionals are expected to do too much with too little. 

When asked what their biggest daily challenges are, the top two answers were struggling to finish everything on time (48%) and feeling stretched too thin (45%). 

During the pandemic, when companies rolled out mass layoffs, HR professionals were some of the first to go. Many of those layoffs led to career changes, meaning that once the pandemic abated and companies needed more recruiters, there were few left to hire. 

This means HR professionals are doing more work than ever with fewer resources, and many are burned out. 

Additionally, our respondents had a lot to say about managing contracts, one of HR’s main functions. Only 1.6% said that contract management is not part of their job.

Concerns about cybersecurity (46%), document management (49%), and convincing others to sign (51%) were at the top of the list of contract management issues. The prevalence of remote work plays a major part in these figures.

As of June 2023, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home, while another 28.2% are hybrid. By 2025, 32.6 million Americans are projected to work from home in some capacity. 

New hires want their onboarding to be as seamless, secure, and convenient as possible. Any friction can deter them from signing. And companies want to avoid compliance risks at all costs. This means HR needs to find a way to make signing remote contracts simple, painless, and quick.

Tech’s role in HR

Overwhelmingly, respondents want to see their organizations adopt more tech solutions (85%). However, for nearly one in four (23%), figuring out how to use new tech is a daily challenge. 

If companies want to implement tech solutions for contract management, then those solutions must be comprehensive yet user-friendly. They cannot be convenient only for tech-savvy employees. 

These solutions need to be easy to use for new recruits so signing contracts is a frictionless experience. At the same time, the tech must be simple to learn so HR can easily adopt it. 

For instance, these solutions need to seamlessly integrate with other, preexisting software systems. Adjusting your workflow pipeline to incorporate new tech should be an empowering experience, not a frustrating one. 

Again, remember that HR professionals already feel overwhelmed with their workload. So it is crucial to adopt solutions that enable them to do more without slowing them down. With this in mind, let’s delve into a game-changing tool that streamlines processes, transforming the way HR professionals handle documentation: eSignatures.  

What HR pros look for in an eSignature solution

Have you ever signed a digital document? 

Then you have probably used an electronic signature solution. The best eSignature solutions directly address many of the most frustrating and prevalent HR pain points. They make signing contracts quick, convenient, and secure for everyone involved.

Overwhelmingly, our survey respondents indicated that they want their HR teams to use eSignatures for a few particular scenarios. They want to electronically sign off employee contracts (65%), performance reviews (53.3%), and leave and time-off requests (40%). 

Signing these standard, periodic documents should be simple. But too often HR teams need to sift through stacks of papers that get cluttered and disorganized, leading to pipeline delays. 

eSignature software helps you keep all your contracts in one convenient place—no stacks of papers involved. It comes with the sort and search functions you would expect, so you can pull up any document you need within seconds. 

The one downside? Not all eSignature software is necessarily easy to learn. Implementing, updating, and managing it can be a headache. Not to mention that some eSignature solutions do not easily integrate with other software, which was the number one thing our respondents wanted it to do (57.4%). 

After that, respondents wanted their solution to be easy for all to use on the first try (49.2%) and allow people to sign in from anywhere (45.9%). Remote work strikes again.

And this is where DottedSign comes in.

Don’t use just any eSignature solution

DottedSign is ranked one of the best eSignature solutions on the market for a reason. It has won multiple awards, including the Premium Usability award by FinancesOnline and the award for Easiest Setup for Small Businesses by G2.

Not only is it one of the easiest eSignature solutions to adopt, but DottedSign can give you and your team a tremendous efficiency boost. This solution enables you to track and work on multiple documents at once with ease. By gathering all your tasks in one place, DottedSign clearly displays which documents are complete and which are waiting for someone’s signature.

DottedSign also comes tailor-made to your particular team or industry. So whether you work in human resource, finance, manufacturing, or in hospitality, there are ready-made workflow pipelines suited to your exact needs.

For HR teams or recruiting agencies, DottedSign offers ‘Reusable Templates’, enabling HR to create and send standard documents, such as employment contracts, and send them in bulk and track the process in an automated way. Additionally, you can use the ‘Prefill’ to populate fields for your signers, enabling them to confirm and sign faster. This provides a more effective and organized way to collect signatures for the HR team.

Finally, DottedSign is secure. It includes a digital certificate with any contract signed through its service. This certificate, also known as a public key certificate, is a digital marker that indicates the signing process can be encrypted.

Ultimately, eSignature solutions are exactly that: solutions. They solve real HR problems. The best of them are convenient, secure, and easy to use.

So if you’re ready to take back your workday and manage contracts with ease, start your trial with DottedSign today, or you can talk with the DottedSign team!