Speed is the differentiator between successful organisations – and those that lag behind – in the era of hybrid work.

When an employer is faced with a talent shortage, the simple task of getting contracts signed without mising a beat can help them gain an edge in a tight talent market.

"The war for talent is here to stay and, in order to remain resilient, organisations are looking for ways to digitalise their processes," said Dan Bognar, General Manager and Vice President Asia-Pacific, DocuSign, in an exclusive interview with People Matters. 

"Getting contracts signed faster makes your workforce more productive. This has never been more important with The Great Resignation on our doorstep," Dan said. "It’s important that employers are easy to do business with in order to attract and retain top talent." It starts with sending employment contracts.

The faster and easier you can make this process, the more likely you are to secure the best candidate.

Reducing HR's dependence on paper-based documentation and transaction and moving processes to the cloud have been vital to resolving pain points such as disorganised ways of working and inefficient and time-consuming manual operations. The shift to using e-signatures on documents, for example, has helped to "unlock [opportunities for] productivity and create a positive experience for employees," Dan said.

"Documents that are e-signed have many advantages to old-school pen and paper. There’s a digitally binding audit trail; they are compliant and legally enforceable. Sensitive information is stored in a more reliable manner in the cloud, rather than keeping paper in a filing cabinet," he said.

"For me, digital transformation is all about creating a frictionless, paper-free, end-to-end digital experience for both your employees and your customers. Paper-based processes have always been seen as slow, manual, expensive and error-prone. Electronic agreements eliminate paper, automate the process, and connect to the other systems that your workforce is already using."

In a future where work will see limited physical interaction, technology has "evolved to empower talents and help nurture innovation," especially on matters where digital agreements form an important part of business growth. 

"Unintentionally the pandemic has been one of the greatest social experiments whereby employees gained new autonomy to work from home -- or anywhere," Dan said.

Employees now expect the same seamless digital experience, which they have as consumers, as employees. At work, employees want simple, easy-to-use, friction-free systems.

And if there's a better way of getting work done, companies need to "embrace it," he said.

"Take things one step at a time. The digital transformation journey can seem like a mammoth and arduous task, but -- in reality -- there are some great SaaS tools that are easy and quick to implement, and give you almost instant time to value. One of them is e-signature.

For Dan, it's pivotal for businesses that are only about to start their transformation process to identify and work with the right partner who is aligned with their business needs.

"Digital transformation is a mindset shift beyond a technology implementation," Dan said. "The products that you implement should serve a wider purpose of positively impacting the organisational culture with a people-first approach."