How to Automate Employment Verification

Between managing HR and running payroll, it’s no secret that people teams face a long list of to-dos each day. Of those, few come up more frequently than employment verification requests. Thankfully, technology has made it easier than ever to streamline how these are processed, saving your team time and money.

Verification 101

If you’ve ever had an employee apply for a loan, you’ve probably received an email or phone call from someone asking for a verification of employment. While loan applications are just one example, nearly any major life decision can call for one of these requests.

Verifications can range in length and format, from short letters to lengthy forms that include detailed payroll information. These disparities can make it difficult for HR pros to streamline how they process verifications.

Standard Timeline

At larger companies, verification requests come in almost daily. At companies like these, manual verifications can cost teams hours per week. For HR managers, this means time wasted filling out repetitive paperwork and sending faxes.

Verification processing is rough for HR, but it can be even worse for employees. Home buyers know how stressful choosing a lender and securing a loan can be. When employment verifications take days (or even weeks) to fulfill, it creates unnecessary friction between HR teams and employees.

Making it Easy

Until recently, businesses had limited options for automating verifications. Some of these early solutions came with serious security and privacy concerns. Thankfully, HR professionals have new alternatives to choose from today.

Verification automation software makes it easy by taking the process off HR’s desk and into the cloud. After integrating the software with your existing HR and payroll platform, verification requests automatically trigger an email to the employee being inquired about. Once the individual confirms that the verification request is legitimate and expected, the requester is granted access to the information they need. That takes your HR team out of the equation, saving hours of time spent on filling out paper forms or faxing documents.

In addition to looking for easy-to-use solutions that follow the above workflow, be mindful of security. Verifications contain sensitive data, like employee salaries, so you’ll need to ensure the software you’re using is safe. Use a tool where:

1. Employee and employer information is only shared through encrypted channels, or transmitted over HTTPS using TLS 1.2.
2. Sensitive employee information is only shared with third parties after receiving explicit employee approval.

That last point is critical. When HR managers are asked directly to verify an employee’s information, there is no immediate guarantee that the request is coming from a legitimate third party. Be sure that your verification software asks for employee permission instead.

This article was initially posted on Namely HR News