Signing employment contracts and HR letters digitally in Nepal

HR departments sign more documents than almost anyone else in a company. Every new hire brings an offer letter, a contract, a confidentiality agreement and a stack of policy acknowledgements. Every change brings a letter. Every exit brings a relieving letter and an experience certificate. Most of this is still printed, signed by hand, scanned and filed, often more than once.

Digital signatures remove the printing and the scanning, and they leave a stronger record than a scan ever did. This guide covers which HR documents suit digital signing, how to set it up, and what to keep.

What a digital signature gives HR

A digital signature is not a picture of a handwritten signature pasted into a PDF. It is a cryptographic seal made with a certificate issued to a named person. It proves two things:

Who signed. The certificate links the signature to a specific person whose identity was checked when the certificate was issued.
That the document has not changed since. If anyone edits the PDF after signing, even by one character, verification fails.

For HR, the second point matters as much as the first. A scanned contract can be altered and printed again. A digitally signed contract cannot be altered without the change showing. Our guide on what a digital signature is explains the mechanics, and digital signature vs electronic signature explains why a typed name or a tick box is not the same thing.

Which HR documents to sign digitally

Most HR documents suit digital signing well:

Offer letters. Signed by the company, accepted by the candidate.
Employment contracts. Signed by both sides.
Confidentiality and IP agreements.
Policy acknowledgements, such as the code of conduct, leave policy and IT use policy.
Salary revision and promotion letters.
Transfer and posting letters.
Relieving letters and experience certificates. Signed by the company, so a future employer can verify them.

Experience certificates are a good place to start. A future employer can check the signature themselves, without calling your office to ask whether a letter is genuine. That saves your HR team time and makes forged letters easy to catch.

Some documents may still need paper, a stamp or a specific form because a regulator or another office asks for it. Check the rules for your sector before moving a document type.

Who signs, and with what

Decide who signs each document type and make sure each of them has a certificate in their own name.

For the company: usually the HR head or an authorised director. Write down who is authorised to sign which documents, the same way you would for a paper signature.
For the employee: the employee signs with their own certificate. This proves the employee signed, not someone with access to their email.

Avoid one shared certificate for the whole HR team. A shared certificate tells you which department signed, not which person, and it makes it hard to stop one person’s access when they leave.

Setting up the process

A simple process for a contract looks like this:

HR prepares the final PDF. Fix the text before sending. Any change after the first signature needs a new document.
HR sends a signing request to the people who need to sign, in order. For example, the employee first, then the HR head.
Each signer opens the request, reads the document and signs with their certificate.
When the last person signs, everyone receives the signed PDF.
HR files the signed PDF and its verification result in the employee’s record.

For a company that hires often, connect this to your HR system so a signing request starts automatically when a contract is generated. Our post on signing requests, webhooks and retries covers how developers wire that up.

Bulk documents

Policy acknowledgements often go to every employee at once. Send each employee their own signing request rather than one document with hundreds of signatures. One document per person is easier to file, easier to check and easier to chase when someone has not signed.

Keep a list of who has signed and who has not, and send reminders. The point of the acknowledgement is to show each person received the policy, so a missing signature is worth following up.

Checking a signed HR document

Anyone who receives a signed document can check it. Open the PDF and look at the signature panel, or use a verification tool. You should see who signed, when they signed, and that the document has not changed. Our guide on how to check a signed PDF walks through it step by step.

Ask your team to check documents they receive from outside too, such as experience letters from a candidate’s last employer. A digitally signed letter can be checked in seconds.

What to keep on file

For each signed HR document, keep:

The signed PDF.
The verification result from the day it was signed.
A record of who sent the request, when, and who signed in what order.

Keep these together in the employee’s file, and keep more than one copy. Employment records are often needed years later, for a dispute, a pension question or a reference. A certificate expiring later does not undo a signature made while it was valid. See is a signature still valid after the certificate expires for why.

What a digital signature does not settle

A digital signature proves who signed and that the document is unchanged. It does not prove the contract terms are fair or legal, or that the employee understood them. Give employees time to read, and a way to ask questions before they sign. The post what a digital signature does not prove covers the limits in more detail.

Privacy

HR documents carry personal details: salary, address, citizenship number, sometimes health information. Nepal’s Privacy Act, 2075 protects personal information, so:

Send signing requests only to the people who need to sign.
Do not forward signed contracts by ordinary email to people outside HR.
Limit who in the company can open employee files, and keep a record of who did.

A short checklist

List your HR document types and mark which can be signed digitally.
Make sure each signer has a certificate in their own name.
Write down who is authorised to sign for the company.
Finalise the PDF before the first signature.
Send one request per employee for bulk acknowledgements.
Keep the signed PDF and its verification result together.
Restrict access to signed HR files.

ePahichan lets companies send signing requests and lets employees sign with their own certificate from their phone. If you want to move your HR paperwork to digital signing, get in touch.

Questions people ask

Can an employment contract be signed digitally in Nepal?

Nepal's Electronic Transactions Act, 2063 gives a digital signature made with a licensed certificate the same standing as a handwritten one. Check with a lawyer for any document that a specific rule says must be on paper.

Does the employee need their own certificate?

For the strongest record, yes. Each person who signs should sign with a certificate issued in their own name, so the signature proves who signed.

What should HR keep after signing?

The signed PDF, the verification result from the day it was signed, and a record of who sent it and when. Keep them together in the employee's file.