How HANSA-FLEX's HR team eliminated the burden of paper files

For many HR departments, paperwork is still an everyday reality. Filing, retrieving and managing employee documents can consume up to 40% of the workday — time that could otherwise be spent supporting employees and developing talent.

At HANSA-FLEX, a hydraulics specialist headquartered in Europe, this challenge had grown to a critical level. The HR department at the company’s Bremen headquarters manages HR processes for around 2,000 employees across Germany. Over the years, thousands of documents had accumulated in paper form — from application materials and contracts to training records and administrative documentation.

Managing all of this information with traditional paper files was becoming increasingly inefficient. Digital transformation was long overdue.

Before the transformation began, the HR team relied on approximately 2,000 physical personnel files stored in an external archive. Everyday tasks such as filing documents or locating information required significant time and effort.

Searching for documents alone consumed around an hour per HR employee each day. When you add that up, you’re looking at a significant amount of time being lost to manual admin tasks. At the same time, documentation and retention requirements were becoming harder to manage reliably with paper files alone.

To reduce time spent on paper files and handle compliance requirements more reliably, the HR department needed a different way to manage employee information.

Rather than implementing technology in isolation, HANSA-FLEX approached the project as a cross-functional initiative. From the beginning, the HR team worked closely with IT, the company’s data protection officer and the executive board. Together, they analyzed the entire HR document landscape:

• Which documents are created and processed in HR?
• Which workflows depend on them?
• Where are paper copies still circulating?
• How should the solution integrate with SAP?

HR employees were closely involved in defining the requirements from the start. Because they work with personnel files every day, their input helped ensure the solution matched real processes and supported adoption early on.

With the requirements clearly defined, HANSA-FLEX implemented a digital HR file using the Doxis platform. The rollout was remarkably fast: the new solution went live just three months after the project started. Employees adopted the system quickly for two reasons. First, the interface felt familiar, with many comparing it to MS Office, and was easy to use. Second, HR colleagues had been involved from the start, so they understood what was changing and why.

Digital personnel files allow employees to retrieve information instantly, eliminating time-consuming searches through paper folders. Documents can also be accessed remotely, allowing employees to retrieve information whenever they need it and supporting more flexible work.

The transformation also delivered broader operational impacts:

• The company no longer needs a leased archive for personnel files
• Lead times for HR processes have decreased significantly
• Compliance requirements can now be managed more reliably

According to the HR team, the transition was smoother than expected. The combination of intuitive software and early involvement of employees ensured a high level of acceptance from day one.

HANSA-FLEX had already been using Doxis in other areas of the business, particularly for SAP data archiving. The platform was also supporting document management, inbound mail and invoice processing across departments including procurement, production, accounting and sales.

That wider footprint mattered. It meant HR wasn’t introducing a disconnected standalone tool, but building on a platform the company was already using across the business. In sales support, for example, HANSA-FLEX was using Doxis for digital contract management for lease agreements, with plans to extend it to service and maintenance agreements as well.

This gave the company a more practical way to scale digitalization, without having to search for and integrate new software every time a new use case emerged.

In the longer term, HANSA-FLEX wants to build more connected workflows across departments. That becomes easier when teams work from the same digital foundation rather than managing documents in separate systems. By digitizing HR files on a platform already used in other parts of the business, the company created a setup that is easier to extend, standardize and connect over time. That is what made this project more than just an HR efficiency initiative — it showed that solving one specific problem can also support broader digitalization across the company.

Do you need help digitizing your own HR systems? Get in touch today.