Streamlining HR contract management with Zoho People and Zoho Contracts

Hiring isn’t the only thing that an HR team does. From designing the right incentive structures to building and nurturing a healthy work culture, the HR role spans across several diverse aspects in modern organizations. And one of those critical aspects is managing employee agreements, NDAs, policy documents, and exit paperwork.

Yet these documents often involve a high volume of manual effort. Creating and tracking them manually slows down onboarding, increases errors, and drains productivity.

What if you could take the manual work out of it?

That’s where Zoho Contracts comes in. It’s Zoho’s contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution that helps streamline every stage of the contract lifecycle—from creation and approval to execution and post-execution management.

You can integrate Zoho People with Zoho Contracts via Zoho Flow to completely automate your HR contract workflows.

This blog post will guide you through how to set it up, step by step. But before that, let's look at the challenges with traditional approaches.

The challenges of handling HR contract processes manually  

Traditionally, the contract lifecycle of employee agreements looks like this:

• The HR team collects employee details manually and shares them with the legal team through emails or spreadsheets.

• The legal team prepares the contracts by manually entering the same details into the contract management system.

• This repetitive process often leads to errors, slows down the onboarding process, and consumes valuable time.

For example, imagine your company is onboarding 50 new employees for a new project within two weeks. For each hire, the HR team needs to prepare employment agreements and NDAs, amounting to 100 contracts. Manually creating, reviewing, and tracking this kind of volume overwhelms teams, delays onboarding, and increases compliance risks. These contracts are often scattered across email threads or personal drives, making them hard to retrieve when needed. And when organization-wide policies or government regulations change, updating all employee contracts becomes a logistical nightmare.

Automating HR contract creation using Zoho People  

With this integration, HR teams can now automate contract creation whenever a new employee is onboarded in Zoho People. Using Zoho Flow, employee data captured in Zoho People is passed directly to Zoho Contracts, where a contract draft is automatically generated, eliminating the need for manual data entry. Predefined contract templates in Zoho Contracts ensure that each draft is structured correctly and compliant with company policies.

How it works  

1.  Trigger event:

An employee is onboarded in Zoho People (a new record is created in the Organization module).

2. Automated actions via Zoho Flow:

• A counterparty (the employee) is created in Zoho Contracts.

• The employee’s contact details, such as email and address, are mapped automatically to the relevant fields in Zoho Contracts.

• A contract draft, like an employment agreement or NDA, is generated automatically based on a predefined template.

3. Review and execute:

• The HR or legal team reviews the draft, makes necessary adjustments if needed, and then sends it for signature.

• The employee signs the contract without the need for a separate tool.

• The contract is stored in the central repository of Zoho Contracts and can be retrieved whenever needed.

  Why this integration matters  

• It saves time by automating contract generation directly from employee data in Zoho People.

• It eliminates errors caused by manual data entry.

• It boosts HR efficiency, enabling faster onboarding and smoother offboarding.

• It ensures compliance, with every contract following standardized templates and every contract activity being tracked in Zoho Contracts.

• It enhances collaboration between HR and legal without the constant exchange of spreadsheets or emails.

Get started today!  

You’ve seen how integrating Zoho People and Zoho Contracts via Zoho Flow transforms HR contract management by eliminating repetitive tasks and improving efficiency.

Looking to implement this in your organization? You can explore this integration in Zoho Flow, try setting up the workflow yourself, request a demo, or connect with our support team for assistance.

Revolutionize your HR contract workflow today!