Wet signature

A wet signature is a signature made by hand, in ink, on a physical copy of a document. The name comes from the ink being literally wet at the moment of signing, and the term exists mainly to distinguish paper signing from its digital alternatives. In HR it still appears on employment contracts and annexes, liability agreements, and any form a bank, notary or labour inspectorate expects to see on paper.

Wet signature vs electronic signature

An electronic signature captures the same intent without paper, but the two are not automatically equal in law. What matters is the level of assurance behind the signature. A simple e-signature records that someone clicked to accept. An advanced one ties the signature to the signer and to a specific version of the document. Qualified electronic signatures rely on a certificate issued by a trusted provider and carry the same legal weight as ink across the EU and Ukraine. A scan or photograph of a wet signature sits outside this scale entirely: it is evidence that a signed paper original exists, not a substitute for it.

When a wet signature is still required

Most HR paperwork no longer needs ink, but some categories still do, and the exact list depends on jurisdiction:

• Documents that must be notarised or filed with a court.
• Powers of attorney, and property or share transfers in many countries.
• Specific payroll or banking mandates where the institution insists on paper.
• Agreements with counterparties who have no e-signature process of their own.
• Archived records signed before the company moved to digital signing.

The hidden cost of paper signing

Every wet signature adds a courier leg, a scan, a filing cabinet and someone whose job becomes chasing it. For distributed teams that delay is measured in days rather than minutes, and it lands where speed matters most: a new hire cannot start until the contract is signed, so paper quietly stretches the onboarding process by a week. It also fragments the record, which is the opposite of what HR document management is supposed to deliver, since the signed original lives in one office while everything else about that person sits in the employee database.

Replacing most wet signatures in PeopleForce

PeopleForce sends documents for signing directly from the employee profile through electronic signature, with several levels of assurance so each document gets the one it actually needs. Ukrainian companies sign with a qualified electronic signature through Diia.Signature, Polish teams use Autenti for basic and qualified signing, and simple or advanced signatures are available through PeopleForce's own signing flow and the Signaturit integration. Every document carries a signing status, so HR sees at a glance what is signed, what was declined and what is still waiting. Contracts, NDAs and policy acknowledgements are generated from templates and filed against the employee record automatically, which removes the scanning step along with the envelope.

Good practice for documents that still need ink

Keep a short, explicitly maintained list of document types that genuinely require a wet signature in each country you employ in, and treat everything else as digital by default. Scan signed originals the day they arrive, attach them to the employee record, and note where the physical copy is stored, so the paper trail never becomes the only trail. The highest-volume documents are usually the easiest to convert: an employee handbook acknowledgement or a standard non-disclosure agreement signed by every new hire takes the most paper out of the process with the least legal exposure.