HR departments have traditionally been buried in paper: orders, applications, contracts, acknowledgement sheets. Yet HR processes are among the best candidates for going digital — most documents are standardised and repetitive. Here is which HR documents you can manage electronically and how an HR team can take the first step.
Which HR Documents Can Go Digital
Ukrainian legislation on electronic documents treats a document signed with a qualified electronic signature as equal to a paper one with a handwritten signature. That means a large share of HR paperwork can be handled without paper at all:
- Personnel orders — hiring, transfers, leave, bonuses. The manager signs with a QES, and the employee acknowledges it electronically.
- Employee applications — for leave, resignation, or updating personal data. The employee submits the application from their own device and signs it with their personal QES.
- Employment contracts and amendments — both parties sign with a qualified signature, and the document carries full legal force.
- Policy and instruction acknowledgements — internal regulations, occupational safety policies, job descriptions.
- Timesheet and schedule approvals — department heads confirm them in a few clicks instead of walking documents between offices.
One important caveat: for certain categories of documents, industry-specific rules may impose additional requirements, so before a full switch it is worth checking the rules for each document type and consulting a lawyer.
Scenario: A Leave Application from a Smartphone
Here is what a paperless process looks like in practice. An employee on a business trip wants to request leave. She opens the browser on her smartphone, creates an application from a template and signs it with her QES — a file key, for example. No plugins or separate apps are needed: in eObig the signature is applied right in the browser, and the private key and password never leave the device.
The application automatically goes to her manager for approval, then to HR, who prepares the order. The director signs the order with a QES, and the employee acknowledges it electronically. The whole cycle takes hours instead of days, and no document gets lost along the way.
Signed Acknowledgements Without a Paper Logbook
A classic HR headache is collecting acknowledgement signatures for a new order or policy from the entire team. Electronically it works like this: the document is sent to everyone on the list, each person confirms acknowledgement with their signature, and the system shows who has already read it and who needs a reminder.
Instead of a logbook full of signatures, you get a tidy register with a timestamp for every action. All confirmations are stored in the electronic archive — finding them a year later is far easier than leafing through paper folders.
Why This Matters for Distributed Teams
The full-scale war has forced many companies to work in a distributed way: some people have relocated, some are abroad, some are in different Ukrainian cities. Paper-based HR workflows simply break down in these conditions — couriering original applications across half a continent is slow and expensive.
The electronic format removes the tie to the office: employees sign documents from wherever they are, and the company's HR processes no longer stall because of distance. We covered this in more detail in our article on document signing for remote teams.
Where an HR Team Should Start
Do not try to digitise everything at once — that is the most widespread of the common EDM implementation mistakes. Instead:
- Pick one document type for a pilot. Leave applications are ideal: they are frequent, simple and free of tricky legal nuances.
- Make sure employees have a QES. Most people already hold a qualified signature — the same one they use for government services.
- Set up an approval route. Define who approves and who signs — the system will then move the document along on its own.
- Run a short training session. Walk the team through the process on a real example — 15 minutes is usually enough.
- Measure the result and scale up. Once the pilot works, add orders, acknowledgements and contracts.
The full list of collaboration capabilities is on the features page.
Key Takeaways
- Orders, applications, employment contracts and policy acknowledgements can all be handled electronically — a QES-signed document is legally equal to a paper one.
- An employee can sign an application from a smartphone in the browser, with the key never leaving their device.
- Signed acknowledgements turn into a transparent register with reminders.
- For distributed teams and relocated employees, the electronic format is effectively the only workable option.
- Start with a pilot on a single document type, then scale.
Try moving your first HR process to digital today: sign up for free at portal.eobig.com or book a demo — we will show how it would work in your company.