Peoplebank, Australia's largest IT and specialist recruiter, has signed a contract to use Secured Signing's digital signing process to give it an edge in getting its contractors signed up and onto client projects.  Peoplebank has begun rolling out the service and early adopters are finding savings of around an hour-and-a-half with each new contractor placement.

Peoplebank has around 180 staff at locations across Australia. It first began looking at the Secured Signing service as part of its ongoing review of back office processes. The company is keen to identify ways to make the contracts process easier for contractors, as well as keeping its footing in the fiercely competitive contractor recruitment market.

As part of this process, Peoplebank developed and implemented two new processes - eStarter and eContracts - that automate many of the processes attached to contract preparation - including pre-loading sensitive contact information (including Tax File Numbers) and managing the signing process.  The processes are securely facilitated by Secured Signing.

Peoplebank uses a cloud based Recruitment Management System called Bullhorn to handle all aspects of on-boarding new contracted staff right through to integration with payment systems and ATO reporting.

Initial hesitancy from the ATO about Peoplebank accepting tax file declaration forms electronically was overcome with a key distribution system as utilised by the banks, where a unique PIN is transmitted to mobile phones to assist authentication.

The Bullhorn platform launches document templates such as contracts in Microsoft Word which are then uploaded to the Secured Signing platform before delivery to prospective contractors. Adoption has been running at around 98% since the new digital alternative to printing and scanning physical documents was introduced in January.

As well as the time savings there has been a huge reduction in manual data entry. Peoplebank processes around 6000 transactions each year including onboarding new contractors and contract renewals.

With Secured Signing, Peoplebank’s sales team are able to instantly upload the appropriate onboarding electronic package that includes workflow, due date for sign-off, and contractor’s particular job-related guidelines and policies. 

The level of automation - especially with the Tax File Number collection puts Peoplebank at the forefront of automation in contractor recruiting, with benefits including perfect accuracy, no matter how complex the contractor's payment arrangements.

The company now has all staff using the Secured Signing’s platform, with team members estimating that the process frees up one-and-a-half hours per contract.

Peoplebank's Andrew Rodger said the company settled on Secured Signing as it was looking for a platform that had a process not just a signature.