A Better Chance Turns Manual HR Into Seamless Employee Experiences with Docusign IAM

Freeing HR to focus on people, not paperwork

For more than 60 years, A Better Chance (ABC) has sought to expand access to educational opportunities for high-achieving students from underserved communities. Founded in 1963, the national nonprofit recruits, places, and supports students at day, boarding, and public schools across the U.S. Chief Finance and Operations Officer Damaris Herron-Watkins describes the work simply: “We’re a bridge from talent to opportunity.”

That bridge changes more than a single life at a time. “It’s not just the individual who’s transformed, but also their family,” says Herron-Watkins. She observes that successful students often introduce siblings, cousins, and parents to new possibilities. “If you can provide access to that one opportunity, people run with it.”

A small but mighty team advances ABC’s mission. To do their best work, they need the freedom to focus on people, not paperwork. Herron-Watkins, for example, oversees finance, IT, and operations in addition to human resources, fielding personnel questions as they arise.

When Herron-Watkins joined in 2019, HR processes were entirely manual; large file cabinets held every agreement the organization had signed in its 60 years. Answering a simple question meant a physical search: if an employee referenced a modified schedule in their offer letter, someone had to dig through thousands of paper documents in a filing cabinet to find the information.

During the pandemic, A Better Chance adopted Docusign eSignature to keep offer letters and onboarding moving, without paper. It was a big step forward, but records remained fragmented. Because an initial offer letter goes to a candidate’s personal email while subsequent documents such as promotions, title changes, or salary updates go to their work email, agreements end up scattered across two inboxes.

Additionally, there was no quick way to search for a specific clause or to distinguish employees from independent contractors. I-9 record-keeping was manual: ABC’s existing process required the team to separately collect and store supporting documentation. Managers had no direct way to see their employees’ records. And the personnel files still lived in Herron-Watkins’ office. “People had to set up a meeting to review a file,” she says, “And when time is already tight, that becomes challenging.”

A platform to transform HR tasks into seamless employee experiences

At a Docusign conference, Herron-Watkins discovered AI-powered Intelligent Agreement Management for HR, and A Better Chance signed on as a beta customer. The platform spans the life of an agreement, from creation, to commitment, to management. With IAM for HR, Herron-Watkins believed ABC could finally bring its entire employee-agreement lifecycle into one connected space.

The ABC team standardizes and assembles documents with IAM for HR. Templates can be uploaded and edited in place with fields like effective and execution dates pre-populated, so consistent language carries across every agreement. ABC then routes documents for review and signature. Employees sign from wherever they are. Through SMS delivery, A Better Chance can reach signers on their phones, a frequent device of choice. An offer packet arrives as a simple text-message link, ready to open and sign in a few taps.

The platform’s greatest impact comes after signing, through Docusign Agreement Manager (formerly Navigator), the intelligent repository that stores, organizes, and analyzes every agreement. It consolidates all documents for an employee in one place, for example, using a matching feature to consolidate agreements found across individuals’ personal and work emails. “One of my dreams has been to have one single digital personnel file,” says Herron-Watkins. Now she does, and she can easily surface it through her People Hub view in IAM for HR.

Searching has changed dramatically too. Instead of opening drawers or scanning inboxes, Herron-Watkins can query agreements for the information she seeks. “We can use natural language to search for a particular clause in anyone’s offer letter, and we find it in seconds rather than hours,” she says.

Automatic notifications flag approaching contract expiration, surfacing the most current and active version of an agreement. Its functionality is useful beyond HR, because A Better Chance also tracks independent-contractor and member-school contracts in the platform.

For a leader managing multiple areas, ease of adoption matters as much as capability. “It was very easy to get up and running on the platform,” says Herron-Watkins. “I credit that to the wonderful folks at Docusign.”

Shifting to a more strategic focus with reclaimed time

IAM for HR has streamlined processes for A Better Chance. Reviewing a personnel file once required a scheduled sit-down; now employees can self-serve, accessing their documents whenever they need them. Clause searches resolve in seconds, and reminders that once depended on Herron-Watkins’ memory now fire automatically.

Of all the ROI the organization has realized with Docusign IAM, the biggest return is time. For a nonprofit, that reclaimed time is essential as well as convenient. Freed from document handling, Herron-Watkins can spend more of her time on the finance, operations, and technology decisions that shape the organization’s future. She sums up the shift: “With Docusign, I’m calmer and can focus better. It’s taken time and stress out of HR processes and I have more flexibility to work on other things.”

That calm reaches the people who the organization serves. Herron-Watkins herself doesn’t work with families day to day, but she supports the employees who do. An employee needing to spend time trying to find an offer or promotion letter is a distracted one; when records are easy to find, observes Herron-Watkins, “our people feel good, and that means they can deliver the best services to our families.”