Are Digitally Signed Employment Contracts Legally Valid and Cost-Effective?

Inquiry About Digital Signatures on Employment Contracts

Is a digitally signed appointment letter or employment contract legally valid? Currently, we are issuing employment terms in duplicate on letterhead, which is signed by an authorized signatory. However, this process involves a lot of paper, courier costs, and time. Therefore, we are looking for an option that will make our processes more productive and will be beneficial from a cost perspective as well.

We kindly request your advice on this matter.

Thank you.

Regards

It is now legally possible to forward your contract notes and other documents to your clients or business associates without printing them. You may even forward a signed document over email, and that is valid proof in a court of law in India. This is called digitally signing your documents. A digital signature is endorsed to the document that needs to be signed. The recipient can not only preserve and produce it before various government authorities whenever required but also verify whether the document is properly signed.

When doing bulk mailing, such as sending a few hundred contracts or bills daily and having to print the documents, sign them, and courier them, it is a very painful job. The cost involved and the time lag in making these documents reach the client or recipient is also an important factor. Just because the document needs to be signed by a person, such a huge cost of handling documents, apart from delayed information, is something not advisable in the current environment.