A clear paper trail is not the same as a fast one. Most of the friction here is not missing information — it is information that exists somewhere and takes too long to find or assemble.
Where the friction is
Every onboarding pack is assembled by hand from the same checklist, and its quality depends on how busy that week is. A thirty-second policy question waits a day in HR's queue because the answer is buried in a forty-page document. Review cycles arrive as a surprise, every year. And the moment a policy changes, the documentation is stale — keeping it current is nobody's actual job.
Where this usually goes wrong
The risk that matters most here is the answer that was right when it was written and wrong by the time someone asks. A Q&A workflow is only as current as the document it reads from. If keeping that document current is nobody's job, the workflow starts confidently handing out yesterday's policy. That is worse than the old delay — a slow answer at least invites someone to check.