Keep up with the digital age and lose the paper mentality around the office and you will soon see that a paperless office can help improve workplace efficiency.
Organising a team to work paperless, or with as little paper as possible, can also have a positive impact on your carbon footprint. That said, if you were to replace your paper products with computers, you’ll still need to monitor your energy output. With overall environmental benefits, changing the way you work can also be cost-effective and improve efficiency. You’ll need to get your whole payroll onboard, including management, to stop bad habits and roll out paperless working across the business.
Enhanced organisation
Working digitally can improve how you plan and organise your projects and day-to-day tasks. This is because you’re able to combine software and tools into your processes. Using mapping tools, RAID logs and excel spreadsheets can improve how you manage your workloads. You’ll be able to monitor project deadlines that you can update and amend when necessary.
Instant communication
It seems ludicrous to send a letter to await for a response a week later, as communication is now instant. Going paperless can only encourage this. Share work on collaborative platforms, build on ideas and speak to people all over the world. If you utilise online messaging systems, you could bring together your remote workers, contractors or clients. This means less time out of the office for half an hour meetings and more time being productive.
Build on security
With the new GDPR regulations now in practice, working on paper has more risk attached to it. A paper trail could easily fall into the wrong hands and sensitive or personal information could get leaked. Avoid a detrimental security breach and use digital storing platforms to safely lock away documentation. Password protect your folders, blind CC internal communications and permanently delete information when it’s not required anymore. It’s a lot easier to store and erase mass amounts of data when you’re working digitally.
Improve productivity
Digitising your process can speed up how you work. The time it takes to print off a project proposal and gain sign off can take longer than pinging over an email with an attachment. Not only this, there’s more of a risk of losing the document when it’s on paper, which can slow things down. It’s a lot harder to lose an email when it’s locked away in a personal inbox. Technology has come along leaps and bounds, there’s even a way you can legitimately sign documentations online, by either your mobile phone or with an electronic pen. Gone are the days of searching through the archive for lost documentation and spending vital office hours shredding unwanted files. With the help from digital, office work is now more instant and reactive.
Article by Patrick Vernon