The I-9 Form Changes: Why You Need A Global HR Service Delivery Platform

As we’ve previously discussed, there is a new version of the I-9 form available. Beginning January 22^nd, 2017, new employees are required to fill out the new version of the form. Previous I-9 versions will not be acceptable for any employees starting after that date.

This isn’t new; the I-9 gets updated every few years. In fact, laws and regulations concerning HR professionals are constantly changing. This can be difficult for HR to manage without the right tools in place, particularly for global organizations that need to comply with changing regulations in multiple countries. When legally mandated forms like the I-9 change, it raises questions and uncertainty for HR. How do we make sure we’re on the right version of the form? How can we prove compliance in an audit? How do we manage the change overall?

Technology can help. A global HR Service Delivery platform provides key capabilities to help you manage these constant changes, including:

Track form version

• It should be easy to identify which version of a form or document is in each employee’s digital file folder, and simple to perform a quick advanced search to show this.

Easy-to-create web forms

• It should be easy for HR to create web forms for employees to fill out electronically. With simple drag-and-drop fields, HR professionals can create new forms when there are changes in a matter of minutes.

Easy-to-build process workflows

• If regulation changes require an adjustment to an HR process, like your onboarding process, an HR Service Delivery platform can help you make that adjustment. It should be easy for HR to edit the workflow or generate a new one quickly, and without IT resources.

Proactive compliance with advanced reporting

• Reporting capabilities should make it easy for HR to see where there are missing documents or what documents are about to expire. Then HR can proactively manage this by generating a request to employees for the required documents from within the report itself.

Secure file sharing 

• A global HR Service Delivery platform will make it easy for you to securely share documents with your legal team or with third party auditors if required.

Global support

• For organizations in more than one country, it’s critical to have a global HR Service Delivery platform, built to support global processes and local exceptions. With a global tool, you should have the flexibility to support all the local regulations and requirements.

There are many other ways a global HR Service Delivery platform helps you manage laws and regulations, such as setting retention schedules for different HR document types in different countries. The key is that you need a flexible system that is easy to update and easy to manage local requirements. You need technology to help you ensure compliance before an audit ever occurs, managing any changes to regulations along the way.