Getting rid of paper clutter isn’t just about keeping an office tidy. In fact, messiness can reduce productivity and make employees feel more stressed.
Cluttered workspaces cause anxiety and negative feelings and according to the Harvard Business Review, these cost American businesses 190 billion dollars per year.
Paper-based clutter is still rampant, regardless of the fact that easy digitization solutions are available today.
Is your company struggling with the management of paper-based records? Effective business record management involves the identification of such issues and the discovery of solutions that will lead to permanent improvements.
In order to handle paper clutter in a way that will contribute to lasting changes, you should focus on the following steps.
Opt for Digital Documents
Many document varieties can be used effectively in a digital format. If you switch to edocuments and you stop printing, lots of the paper clutter will disappear in time.
Invoices, communication with clients, HR records, financial records (bank statements, taxation documents) and many others can be digitized effortlessly. Once you switch to using edocuments, you can store those online and employ a document management system to easily retrieve and utilize essential data.
Obviously, digital document creation will take some time to replace a paper-based process. Luckily, many solutions can be integrated with each other, allowing you to make one good step after the other.
Scan Papers for Better Business Record Management
The next step would be to have paper-based documents scanned. This way, you can add essential documentation to your online database.
Obviously, there are document retention policies that require you to maintain records for a certain period of time. These records, however, don’t always need to be on paper. Keeping digital copies will be enough to ensure compliance and meet your legal obligations.
Document scanning has become a vital service for effective business record management. It’s up to you to decide whether the procedure would occur on premises or if you’d use a professional team that will take your records to their location. Both approaches have pros and choosing one or the other depends on your preferences.
Sort Through Papers Regularly
Even if you do your best to clean things up, papers are still likely to accumulate in the absence of all-encompassing paperless policies within the organization.
That’s why frequent reviews are required.
Going through a paper archive often enough ensures the maintenance solely of documents that are needed. Everything else can be destroyed safely (shredding would be the best choice), gradually reducing the size of the archive.
If you leave things the way they are, paper-based clutter will accumulate once again after you’ve done the initial cleanup. This is why the management of hard-copy records should become an ongoing process.
Introduce Sanctions for the Excessive Use of Paper
Effective business record management is all about the creation of the right corporate culture.
You can accomplish the goal in several ways.
For a start, train employees to use a digital document management system to the fullest extent of its capabilities. If people know what they’re doing and they find the system user-friendly, chances are that paper-based records will be significantly reduced in time.
It’s also a good idea to introduce some limitations when it comes to printing and the use of paper. Reduce the number of printers and come up with rules about what can be printed and what can’t. Until the overall corporate culture changes and everyone embraces digitization, such limitations can have an educational effect.
Change Interactions with Clients and Partners
Apart from promoting internal change, you should also look out of the organization to ensure effective business record management.
Lots of the incoming paper-based documents are produced by clients, partners and other collaborators.
It’s a good idea to change the way you interact with these entities.
Digital processes are often faster, cheaper and much more convenient. Introducing those is often a matter of making a suggestion and testing that opportunity to establish its effectiveness.
Let clients and partners know you’re on a mission to go paperless. Very often, they’ll be willing to change alongside your organization, especially if the change results in more productivity and saved time.
As difficult as this may seem to believe, paper-based clutter is still a large issue for organizations large and small. Very often, inertia is to blame for that issue. Introducing change requires a proactive approach. If you get motivated to make that change happen right now, however, you’ll soon get to experience the benefits. And needless to say, the advantages of effective digitization are numerous.