01The Problem
Every employment document — offers, confirmations, lifecycle letters — started as a copy of the last one. Someone opened a previous file, replaced the name, changed the dates, and hoped they caught everything.
That is a slow process with an expensive failure mode. A wrong date on an offer letter is not a typo; it is a document somebody is about to sign.
02The Old Process
- Previous document opened and edited over, carrying whatever was left in it
- Employee details retyped from the master record by hand
- Emailed to the signatory, then chased until it came back
- Emailed again to the employee, then chased again
- Saved manually, with a filename decided in the moment
The filing was the part nobody counted. Documents ended up under five different naming habits, which meant finding one later was its own small project.
03The Objective
Generate the document from the record rather than from the last document. Keep a human decision at the two points where judgement genuinely matters — approval and final check — and automate everything else, including the filing.
04My Approach
The first decision was where the truth lives. If details are retyped, the document and the record will eventually disagree; so the master employee record became the only source, and the template pulls from it.
The second decision was which steps to leave alone. It would have been easy to automate the whole chain to the point where a document could reach an employee without anyone having read it. Approval and the final check are not bottlenecks — they are the control. I automated up to them and after them, and left them human on purpose.
One detail I pushed for: the employee receives the unsigned copy first, attached to a covering email with a default body HR can edit before sending. People should be able to read a document before they are asked to sign it, and the person sending it should be able to say something human alongside it.
05The System
| Component | What it does |
|---|---|
| Master employee record | The single source. Only active employees are selectable, so documents cannot be raised against a stale record. |
| Document picker | The requester chooses which documents are needed; several can be generated in one pass |
| Placeholder templates | Approved Word templates with named placeholders, so wording stays standard and only the data varies |
| Generation step | Details extracted from the record and written into the template automatically |
| Signature routing | Authorised signatory reviews and signs, then HR checks again before it leaves |
| Covering email | Default body that HR can edit, sent with the unsigned copy for the employee to read first |
| Automatic filing | Signed document filed into that employee’s folder, named to a set convention |
06The Tools
| Tool | Role in the system |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Forms | Employee selection and document choice |
| Word templates | Approved wording with named placeholders |
| Power Automate | Extraction, generation, routing, sending and filing |
| SharePoint / OneDrive | Employee folders and the filing convention |
| Outlook | Covering emails and signature requests |
| Signature routing | Review and signature capture for the authorised signatory, then the employee |
07The Workflow
- Employee selected → only active records are offered
- Documents chosen → one or several, in a single request
- Generation → details pulled from the record into the approved template
- Signatory review → authorised person reads and signs
- HR check → second read before anything reaches the employee
- Send → unsigned copy to the employee with an editable covering email
- Employee signs → signed copy returned
- Filing → saved to that employee’s folder under the set naming convention
08The Result
Documents are generated from the record rather than from the previous document, which removes the copy-paste error entirely rather than trying to catch it.
Chasing is replaced by routing. Filing stops being a task and becomes a consequence, which means the folder is reliable enough to actually search.
The copy-paste error was removed rather than caught, and the employee folder became reliable enough to actually search — which matters most on the day someone needs a signed document in a hurry.
09What this means for a CEO
Two things you care about, neither of which is speed.
Accuracy on documents people sign. Employment paperwork is one of the few places where an admin mistake becomes a dispute. Generating from the record removes the most common source of those mistakes.
A complete file, without anyone maintaining it. When you need to produce a signed document — for an audit, a dispute, a due diligence request — it is where it should be, named the way everything else is named. That is worth more on the day you need it than all the hours saved before then.