The paperless office has long been a dream of many organizations, but for some, it’s never quite happened. Given businesses’ reliance on computers and digital technology, keeping documentation in a physical format is unnecessary, time-consuming, and expensive.
Digitize Your Historical Paperwork
If your company was running before the internet became widespread, then you probably have rooms full of documents lurking about the office. Either, it’s completely useless and left untouched, or you have employees working on both paper-based and digital systems now. It’s not an ideal situation. Plus, think about what you can do with all that space?
Though it might seem like a huge project, you need to sort through this paperwork and dispose of anything you don’t need to keep for business or regulatory reasons. There are companies who can take your old, printed pages and digitally scan them so that they can be read and filed digitally.
Choose the Right Information Management System
If your systems are a mess, you’ll find that people start printing out things in the office so that they have them to hand quickly. Companies such as John Yokley PTFS offer these platforms in order to store and retrieve information easily, which can improve productivity and reduce reliance on printed documents.
Educate Your Employees
Investing in your systems is all well and good, but unless the people using them are trained in the right way, they are pointless. When implementing new systems, get feedback from employees at every stage, so they feel like they are involved in the process rather than having it imposed on them.
Put resources in place to train employees correctly on all systems and provide additional training for those who need it.
Make sure that you include training in your onboarding training so that new employees are comfortable using the systems from the get-go.
Provide the Right Tools for the Job
Having the right content management system in place is important, but how do your employees view documents? If they’re at their computer, a double monitor set up can allow them to have documents open on the screen while also using other software, this can reduce the need for print outs.
Additionally, if your employees are on the move, in meetings, or away from their laptops, then trying to read from a tiny smartphone screen can be frustrating. In this case, you can use larger tablets that allow documents to be accessed and read remotely rather than printed out and carried around. Although there’s an initial outlet on the technology, it will soon be recouped in the amount of paper and toner you’re saving.
Key Points
There are lots of benefits to reducing reliance on paper in the workplace. Not only will you be saving space, but you’ll be reducing your environmental impact too. From a security perspective, being able to control the location and access of your documents is important too and can reduce the possibility that confidential information can fall into the wrong hands.
