Paper is the hallmark of an office setting. Memos, letters, faxes, copies and print-outs are all part of the office culture. Increases in technology are now rendering this nostalgic article a relic, with less and less use in modern offices.
As we progress, we see old technologies fall by the wayside and new ones take their place. Since about 2006, Americans have been using less and less paper in their working environment. Part of this is can be traced back to increasing knowledge of the environmental impact of printing unnecessary items, but it’s largely due to advances in technology.
After all, you no longer need to mail documents, you can e-mail them. Meeting minutes can be recorded on tablets; fax machines are pretty much obsolete and can be hard to find. Everyone now carries a mini-computer in the form of their smartphones, and communication time between client and business has diminished to mere seconds.
With all of these advances, it’s no surprise to see the push for more and more productivity. Technology rules in this place where paper once was king, and pushing paper out can provide more and more efficiency. It’s time to increase productivity and go paperless by using these techniques.
- Speed Boost
This is just a plain, simple fact. Technology is faster, literally. It travels at almost the speed of light. Emails are faster than snail mail or memos, and you can do fun things, like mark them as urgent or request a read receipt. People see emails arrive and are almost compelled to check them. It could be anything — a memo, a meeting, or an invitation to lunch with the boss — so employees jump on it.
Of course, emails also need to be prioritized properly. Too many are easy to lose track of and you can accidentally spend a whole day trying to sort them out. People tend to check their cell phones about every 6 minutes. You can see how that would be distracting. Make sure to emphasize the importance of scheduling email organization time, and show people how to indicate if a message is important or time-sensitive.
- Better Organization – And Less Clutter
A classic image of a disorganized employee involves papers just about everywhere, and some people might actually have lived like that. Since we’ve already looked at email getting a bit out of control, let’s also look at how this can help organization.
Remember how we used to look up phone numbers? They were all written down, and you had to flip through until you found the right one. Now, you can start typing in a name and up pops the number! Instead of wasting hours at a time trying to find a document, you can simply search for it and increase your productivity with minimal effort.
- Shared Documents
Platforms that allow everyone access to the same documents are great for increasing your employee productivity. The days of a project coming to halt because someone is out sick are gone. By keeping work open and available to everyone, documents can be shared company-wide. This comes in especially handy when you need more input. You might actually increase interdepartmental efforts as a result of going paperless.
- Increased Accessibility
Going along with the idea of shared documents, increased accessibility is also important. With the expansion of our networks, we are no longer confined to working just in our town. Instead, we have the entire world to cover, and that means we’re sending our employees pretty much everywhere. If they’re going out there, we need to be able to reach them and, more importantly, they need to be able to reach us.
If you have a technician or salesperson out in the field and they need help, pictures can be much more helpful than a simple description. On the same note, they might need something from you — blueprints, written consent, maybe a contract. Sending an email is faster and more effective than faxing, with less chance of running into technical errors.
- Statements
Chances are you have an accountant or an accounting team that still deals with a large amount of paperwork. Monthly bank statements, company credit cards, cell phones and employee retirement accounts are all documented separately, and they often come at about the same times.
Switching over to paperless accounts could make these statements much easier for accountants to handle. They go out, get checked, and can be sorted into individual files the whole accounting team can see.
- Electronic Signatures
Most of the time, a CEO or department head is busy or out of the office. Getting signatures can be one of the most annoying, time-consuming things for an employee to do, especially because upper management doesn’t always want to be tracked down or bother with these smaller details. An electronic signature saves significant time, since it can simply be transferred to whatever documents need it and then sent off all in the same process.
Since it’s an actual signature and carries the same legal weight, it should be protected. Many systems offer top-notch security, and you can control who has access to what. Plus, in the event of a fire or flood, your documents are still protected.
