A Surprising Way to Boost Employee Engagement

Attention Credit Unions: Are your employees engaged and satisfied with their jobs? The answer might be more important than you think! Actively engaged employees are 43% more productive than those that are disengaged or dissatisfied.¹

But the sad truth is that most office employees aren’t engaged at work. In fact, a recent study showed that a shocking 70% of employees are either not engaged or disengaged at work.²

Of course there is no quick fix for employee engagement, but you might be surprised to hear that going paperless could have a significant impact on your employee engagement.

Paper Can Cause Frustration

Think about it… During their free time, many employees are used to managing their lives digitally. They have instant access to any information they need, from their child’s daycare hours to information about their finances.

It’s easy to see why digitally engaged employees would be frustrated when they transition from the digital world of their personal lives to the paper world when they come to work. It can be frustrating for employees to use paper files and processes when they know from their personal lives that there’s an easier way to manage data.

Paper files are difficult to find and manage, and they can easily become outdated or inaccurate. Relying on handwritten signatures to close business means you need employees who are dedicated to keeping the paper flowing smoothly. If you can’t keep these processes under control, you risk losing business or even losing members. 

Just think about the time and energy your employees spend doing these tasks:

• Mailing documents out to be signed
• Chasing down forgetful signers
• Resending documents to members that misplaced documents or never received them
• Opening envelopes when documents are returned
• Reviewing documents to make sure all the signature and initial fields are filled out
• Checking that all required information has been filled in
• Assigning document ID numbers to paperwork
• Filing completed documents
• Scanning paper documents for electronic storage
• Re-keying information from a signed paper form back into an electronic system

Today, most forms can be easily filled out on a computer, but then members must print them out and sign them on paper. These documents then need to be re-scanned and emailed, faxed or sent by snail mail back to the credit union that sent them. And your employees have to take up the slack by confirming signatures, re-keying information and scanning or filing the finished documents.

“We lost loans that could have been easily closed if we had SIGNiX’s digital signature service sooner,” says Alicia Alvarez of Alamo Federal Credit Union, remembering their paper process before using e-signatures. “We tried faxing paperwork over and having them fax signed documents back to us, but the process was still exasperating.”

Boosting Engagement with E-Signatures

Credit unions that adopt e-signatures quickly see an increase in employee engagement. E-signature solutions like SIGNiX take on all of the tasks typically performed by a group of employees. With this software, employees can easily perform all of these tasks in minutes instead of days or weeks:

• Send out documents for signature to multiple parties
• Track documents through the signing process
• Send forgetful signers a reminder email (SIGNiX sends out reminder emails automatically every 3, 5, 7 and 9 days)
• Prove each signer’s identity
• Ensure that all mandatory fields are completed
• Collect electronic copies of forms

By adopting e-signatures, you can give your employees the freedom to spend more time focusing on critical aspects of their work instead of just moving paper. This doesn’t just mean more employee engagement, but it can also mean more business for your credit union.

“E-signatures are an integral component of a much bigger strategy that we will continue to expand on in the future,” says SIGNiX customer John Hays of Access Community Credit Union. “If we spend less time closing loans, then we should have more time to go out and get new borrowers.”

References

1. Engage Employees and Boost Performance, Hay Group

2. Gallup Business Journal