How EasyJet Switzerland Automated 900+ Monthly HR Documents with Skribble and dox42

In July 2021, Sarah Jackson had a problem only HR people will fully appreciate: hundreds of employees scattered across Europe, and a Swiss authority that had just decided every one of them needed to sign a form by hand.

EasyJet Switzerland had used the government's reduced working time scheme — Kurzarbeit, chômage partiel, furlough, depending on who you ask — to get through the pandemic. The simplified version of the scheme didn't require individual sign-off. Then the rules changed, and Sarah's team suddenly needed a legally valid signature from every employee, every month, on a document containing personal data. Employees who weren't always sitting at a computer. In ten days, together with Skribble and dox42, her team had a working solution live.

This webinar recap brings together the four people who built it: Sarah Jackson, Country HR and Administration Manager at EasyJet Switzerland; Katina Strimer, Senior Account Executive at Skribble; Johannes Linder, Lead Technical Evangelist at dox42; and Louis-Marie Richard, freelance dox42 expert. Below, you'll find their story, the full transcript, and answers to the questions the audience asked live.

What You'll Take Away

• Why EasyJet Switzerland needed a legally valid way to collect employee signatures during the pandemic, and why paper wasn't an option
• How Skribble's e-signature and dox42's document automation combine to handle hundreds of individual documents at once
• The step-by-step process the team used to go from first conversation to a live rollout in 10 days
• What changed for EasyJet Switzerland's HR team and employees once the tool went live
• Where this kind of integration works beyond HR — from real estate to insurance to procurement

The Challenge: Signing Pandemic Paperwork for a Workforce Spread Across Europe

Sarah Jackson: EasyJet Switzerland has been a Skribble customer since 2019 — I think we were one of their first customers, in fact. We already used Skribble's electronic signature to sign contracts and documents, and it's a fantastic tool because it lets us have documents signed from anywhere, at any time. In aviation, our people work all over the place, on different shifts, so having something this flexible is a huge benefit.

Then came the biggest crisis the aviation industry has been through. From March 2020, airlines around the world grounded their aircraft because of the pandemic and the travel restrictions that followed. In Switzerland, we were lucky to apply for the reduced working time scheme — the furlough scheme, for the British and American people on this call. Kurzarbeit for German speakers, chômage partiel for French speakers.

At the start, the Swiss government ran a simplified version of the scheme, so we didn't have to go to every individual employee and have them validate their hours. That was great for us. But in July 2021, the government decided the standard rules should apply again. Under those rules, each employee has to validate the number of hours they didn't work by signing a document — one that includes personal data like name, insurance number, and the hours not worked.

So my challenge in HR was, first, understanding how to collect all the data from our systems. Second, understanding how to turn that data into a document the authorities would accept, with a legal signature. Third, how do I get that document to employees who, at this point, were spread across Europe and didn't always have access to a computer — while keeping the whole process simple? And at the end, I needed to be able to retrieve the documents to apply for the scheme and to have them ready for future audits.

Since we'd been a Skribble customer for a long time already, that's when the idea started to form in my very non-technical brain: why not ask Skribble if they can help us with an electronic signature solution?

Skribble: E-Signing for Every Employee, on Any Device

Katina Strimer: Thank you, Sarah. So Sarah approached us with a question, and the answer was simple: could Skribble's e-signature be used by all Swiss EasyJet employees in a user-friendly way? Yes, it can.

Skribble lets you electronically sign documents, and it flexibly integrates into digital workflows through solutions like dox42, SAP, or Microsoft Teams. We were founded in 2018 and provide the legally suitable electronic signature for any type of contract. The basis is formed by legally regulated standards, including the qualified electronic signature — the only form of electronic signature that's legally equivalent to a handwritten signature under EU, UK, and Swiss law. Skribble can be set up quickly for a wide range of use cases and integrates easily into your existing systems: easy to use, and you can sign from anywhere.

The challenge EasyJet Switzerland faced was how to upload around 900 documents a month, each with different individual personal information, and get them to employees automatically. That's where dox42's automation comes in.

dox42: Automating Hundreds of Documents at Once

Johannes Linder: Thanks, Katina. So here's what we had so far: a lot of documents, a lot of employees, and a way to sign. What was missing was how to get 900 contracts generated automatically at once and sent to everyone, so they could sign — as Katina said — without an account, on whatever device they wanted to use. That's where our project began.

dox42 is a software product for document automation and data integration. We like to describe ourselves as a LEGO — we actually bring LEGO bricks to events — because we see ourselves as the LEGO stone of document automation. We connect to a lot of systems to pull data from, generate documents based on complex conditions, handle images and barcodes, and output to a lot of different destinations.

In this project, the challenge for 900 employees was to have one template that would represent the contract, which would then be the base sent out to everyone. So at this point we had Sarah's requirements, a signature service for the whole signing process, and a product for document automation. The one missing piece was someone to combine all of this into a project that actually gets delivered — and that's where Louis-Marie comes in.

Building the Solution in 10 Days

Louis-Marie Richard: Thank you. As mentioned, we had documents that needed signing, and we needed to let EasyJet's HR team do that very fast and very simply. What Katina didn't mention is that Skribble provides an API, and what Johannes didn't mention is that dox42 allows custom extensions for output. So the idea was to use the Skribble API through a custom extension of the dox42 server, send each individual document to Skribble, and let Skribble collect the signature.

We called this a ten-day success story. For project management, we launched the project on day one, then met with Sarah's team to define the project goals and key milestones. We worked on two tracks in parallel: the legal side, validating that the signature level would be accepted by the authorities, and the business analysis side, identifying what data we needed, checking whether it was feasible to get it, and structuring it to be usable in a dox42 template.

Within two days, we'd developed the template and put all the data into it, and we set up EasyJet's dox42 server instance in the cloud, since that's how we run it. Then EasyJet's HR team unit-tested the process — we put just two or three lines into the Excel sheet, tried it, and validated that everything worked: employees could confirm their hours and sign without signing up to Skribble first. By day ten, we'd deployed and sent out the first batch of 1,000 documents.

At the end of the process, the HR team has a very simple job: prepare and structure the data in an Excel spreadsheet, send that spreadsheet to the dox42 server instance with the right parameters, and the server generates the documents and uses a custom output action to send each one to Skribble. In the background, Skribble notifies the employees and collects the e-signature. At the end, HR just runs a script to retrieve all the signed documents in the batch.

Inside the Workflow: From Excel Sheet to Signed Document

Louis-Marie Richard: We've prepared a short demo video to show this. The first part of the project was defining the structure of the data, to make sure we had everything we needed in the spreadsheet — a job we did together with Sarah's team.

Then we took the static version of the document and identified the placeholders where data from the Excel file needed to go. Once that was done, we defined where the signature should sit at the end of the process. We had columns for dates, codes, periods, names, and some conditional data to handle too.

We prepared the template in Microsoft Word, where you can define field formatters — so you can set how a date or a number should be displayed — and then drag and drop the columns from the Excel spreadsheet into the right place in the document. One useful capability in dox42 is generating tables dynamically, or dynamically hiding rows or columns, which you can define through the "Automate Range" button, setting conditions line by line or block by block.

Once the conditions are set, you can test the generation directly in Word and check the result — for example, I noticed the period wasn't formatted the way I wanted, adjusted it, and generated a document to check it matched what I expected for all employees. From there, you can test in the dox42 server designer, a tool for preparing the call: defining parameters like the signer's email, first name, and last name, and the required fields for the Skribble API call.

Once the call succeeds, the employee immediately receives an email with a signing invitation. All they have to do is click the button, check and read the document, and click "Sign Now." After accepting Skribble's terms, the signed document appears right away — you can see on the right that the signature request is complete, and the process owner is notified that the document has been signed. Sarah's team gets a confirmation as each person signs.

So on the left, you see the template; on the right, the result after generation. Sarah — have all the objectives been met? Are you satisfied with the results?

The Results: Faster Processes, Happier Employees

Sarah Jackson: Thank you, Louis-Marie. We're definitely satisfied with the results. Looking back, it's pretty remarkable — remember, this was still a world where we weren't meeting in person. As Johannes said at the start, the collaboration ran between Switzerland and Austria, so it really was a virtual project. And as Louis-Marie just showed, the result was impressive.

From my first conversation with Katina at Skribble to sending out the first documents, it took 10 days. Every month after that, we generated approximately 950 documents, each with individual personal information. Our employees loved the system because they found it easy and simple — they could validate their hours right on their phone. Some of our employees start very early or finish very late, so that mattered.

They also liked being able to download a copy of the document for their own records, which meant we didn't need to send them a separate copy either.

I want to say my warmest thanks to the whole team. The collaboration between Skribble, dox42, myself, and my team was outstanding. They really understood our problem and helped us turn what was, for me, a massive HR headache into a genuine success story. Thanks to everyone at dox42 and Skribble, and especially to Louis-Marie, who played a major role in making this a success.

Katina Strimer: Thank you for your words, Sarah. It's amazing what happened in this use case, and I can imagine it was a difficult time for you.

More Skribble Customer Stories: Real Estate, Tax Services, and Insurance

Katina Strimer: Since EasyJet Switzerland is a happy customer, I'd like to share a few other happy customers across different industries — from construction to production, insurance to financial services.

The first is Wincasa, which manages around 230,000 rental objects in Switzerland. With Skribble, they've digitized contracts — for example, a tenant can create a rental contract for a parking space directly from the website and complete and sign it, legally binding, within minutes.

Another is DATEV, a technical information services provider for tax advisors, accountants, and attorneys with more than 7,000 employees in Germany. They sign supplier contracts and have integrated the flow into their contract management system. Thanks to Skribble, they get data protection, an easy user interface, and can invite external signers who can sign without creating a Skribble account.

The third is Mobiliar, the oldest insurance and pension company in Switzerland, insuring roughly every third household and every third company in the country. Their requirement was data hosted exclusively in Switzerland, high compliance and security, and a simple tool that can replace a handwritten signature. They use Skribble for IT procurement, integrated into their contract management software, to sign purchasing contracts with external partners and services quickly and in an audit-proof way.

dox42 Beyond HR: Where Document Automation Fits In

Johannes Linder: Thank you, Katina. Last but not least, a few dox42 use cases. As Katina's examples show, most business processes eventually require documents — and as we've seen today, some of those documents need to be signed.

The step before that, as Louis showed in the live demo with drag-and-drop fields, is a very frequent challenge for businesses today: you have your systems — your CRM, your ERP, your HR software — and each has its own approach to document automation. Our approach is to integrate a lot of different data sources and output to a lot of different destinations, like we've seen today with Skribble.

At the end of the day, this becomes a slim, easy digital process where the document isn't a hassle for the user. Think about contracts, offers, quotes, legal documents, proposals, outgoing emails — usually business units generate these, and it takes them a lot of time, or if it's done programmatically, it becomes a pain to match the actual business requirements when IT designs the document. That's the gap we try to fill.

You get easy design in Office, as you've seen, and a lot of data sources you can integrate depending on your architecture. dox42 is used across all industries, because business processes require documents, and most of them run digitally now — whether it's a communication to a customer like a quote or an invoice. They're easy to maintain, easy to adjust, and easy to integrate into many different data sources. dox42 isn't another island application — it's one document generation tool you can use across all your platforms.

Questions and Answers from the Webinar

Do you see potential for this beyond COVID-19 requirements?

Sarah Jackson: I certainly do. Using dox42 and potentially Skribble together can save so much time — instead of having your HR team generate 50 documents, print them all, get them signed, and send them out, there's a digital solution, as we've described today. Looking at the new working world, with more people working remotely, I think the tools we used in this project are ones we'll use again for many other things.

Johannes Linder: One thing you mentioned early on is that the users loved using it, because it made things easier for them — and I think that's one of the most integral parts of any IT project. A project is successful if the users are happy to use it. The way you brought this into the organization and included the right people at the right time is also a best practice from what I've seen.

Sarah Jackson: It was a real pleasure. Going back to employee satisfaction, which is something we measure regularly at EasyJet — this could have been an extremely complex process, but thanks to everyone's collaboration and quick thinking, we turned something that could have been very negative into something very positive.

Can we try dox42 and Skribble ourselves?

Johannes Linder: Yes, of course. You can do a trial of dox42 — that's an easy one to set up. If you want to test it, contact us, and we can bring in Louis, for example, to help with the first setup. There are definitely options for trials.

Katina Strimer: From Skribble's side, we're happy to offer a 30-day trial. You can go to our website, start the trial, and also create a demo API key to test with. You get 50 signatures included, so you can sign your first documents electronically.

Can our own team learn to design the documents, or does that need a service provider?

Louis-Marie Richard: In this project, given the timeline and milestones, I did the templating myself. But we did this together with Anthony from Sarah's team, and I trained him so he could improve the document himself if he wants to — he's absolutely capable of it. If you're in a hurry, it makes sense to bring in that experience from us, but it's a simple solution, integrated directly into Word, so people from marketing or HR can improve the template themselves.

Sarah Jackson: I'd add that this was genuinely one of the positive parts. Sometimes on projects like this, you're a bit locked in — you're not given the flexibility to adapt the templates. It was a real advantage working with Louis-Marie and dox42 that we had the flexibility to alter the templates ourselves, without always having to go back and ask for changes. That was a real positive for us too.

The transcript ends here.

About the Speakers

Sarah Jackson — Country HR and Administration Manager at EasyJet Switzerland (also responsible for Austria); has worked in aviation since 1995.

Katina Strimer — Senior Account Executive at Skribble at the time of the webinar.

Johannes Linder — Lead Technical Evangelist at dox42, based in Vienna.

Louis-Marie Richard — Freelance dox42 expert specializing in custom component development for the dox42 server, based in Lausanne.