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A case study from eSign and the University of Liverpool into the use of electronic signatures in the recruitment industry.
The recruitment business that participated in the study is based in the South East, has 50+ employees and manages circa 1,500 contracts per month. Over a twelve-month period, the following savings were achieved:
Prior to using eSign, the recruitment company monitored the daily post for signed placement documents returned by candidates. These documents are then checked and filed on-site to be available for audit purposes. eSign enables contracts to be automatically filed online, eliminating the cost, time and effort associated with printing and filing of placement documents. This would result in significant efficiency savings on administration.
Prior to adopting eSign, the recruitment company sent placement documents out via email, the candidate was required to print and sign the document and return it via post. This resulted in the candidate incurring both printing and postage costs and delays in the signed documents being returned to the recruitment company.
By implementing the use of electronic signatures, the recruitment company was able to eliminate the need for the candidate to print, sign and post the placement documents, resulting in document turnaround time being reduced by 80%.
The recruitment company sends out an average of 1,500 contracts per month. Each contract is 11 pages (equating to 198,000 pages per year). These are sent to the candidate via e-mail. With the manual signature process, this meant that printing costs of approximately £29,700 per year were absorbed by the candidates of the recruitment company.
The cost to the candidate to return the signed document candidates by post would be either £0.98 or £0.76 for first or second-class post, respectively. Additionally, sending a letter via Royal Mail equates to 26g of CO₂e. By eliminating the requirement to post a document, not only was the cost to the candidate eliminated, but the CO2e incurred by posting the letter was also eliminated.
Through the use of electronic signatures in a core part of their business, the recruitment company has been able to make significant improvements in their candidate document turnaround time while also improving the service they provide both their clients and candidates and reducing the time taken to complete the recruitment process. There are also clear next steps for the recruitment firm to make direct savings on paper, printing and storage costs.