Gone are the days of overflowing filing cabinets. Today, everything is stored in the cloud.
As legacy firms scramble to adapt to the new standard, paper is fast becoming redundant.
Digital storage has empowered companies to reduce or eliminate the use of paper in their business processes.
The biggest driver for many organisations in the paperless shift, is the cost savings on papers, files, pens, and other kinds of stationery, not to mention the storage space required to house these materials.
Additionally, the risk of data loss is considerably reduced when it’s stored digitally, with comprehensive solutions and systems ensuring multiple redundancies and backups are built in. Further, papers take up a lot of space, and they can be hard to track, which risks the security of your information.
This is why companies are now turning to digital document management, online storage platforms, and digital software to ensure a paperless office. This approach helps them in getting rid of clutter, streamlining information and reports, and reducing their footprint in the environment.
If you consider making the shift, this is the right time to do it. But moving to digital information management systems may seem overwhelming at first. This is why we are here to offer five simple steps to start making the switch towards a paperless office.
Hopefully, by now, you understand the need to reduce the use of papers in the workplace.
Here’s how you can do it:
The complete transition to a paperless office should be a slow and gradual process. It's important to ease your people into the new way of doing things. Take your time when implementing new procedures, so there is no hurry, and no data gets lost in the process.
Start by setting goals for employees and entire departments to motivate them to transition to digital platforms. You can also set up a reward program when your employees meet their goals to encourage them to go paperless.
But you need to be mindful that your company won’t stop using paper entirely for a very long time. Even if your processes are 100% paperless. For example, your employees might need to print some things like a seating plan for a seminar. This means that you need to make continual efforts to support this transition.
This is not a one-person job; it requires consistent efforts from your entire team. This means you need to get them involved in the process from the start, ask for their suggestions, and appreciate their feedback throughout the transition.
According to a report, 37% of the 250 companies surveyed had compliance concerns that inhibited them from going paperless. This means you need to show them how switching to digital platforms can help them eliminate compliance risks and issues owing to the platform’s security features.
Assure your employees that the features of these digital platforms enable them to prevent any compliance issues and eliminate other problems that arise during the paper documentation process.
You also need to demonstrate how your customers prefer electronic correspondence over paper correspondence as it is more convenient for them. This helps you ensure the support of your employees in making a successful transition to a paperless workplace.
After setting down some initial procedures and plans, it’s time to start digitizing your business processes. Start by scanning your paper documents and transferring them to the cloud.
Here, you can easily digitize the accounting and finance, expenditure tracking, evaluations, and attendance. You can also digitize your compliance processes with Sine Workflows.
Minimise the workload of paper-based inductions and your contractors’ forms with digitised inductions. Enabling you to store your inductions and document collections digitally. All while managing approvals and expiries automatically so your workforce is never non-compliant.
This helps keep you and your staff from needlessly printing inductions and documents and dealing with hordes of paperwork that can be pretty overwhelming.
After digitizing your workflow and business processes, you need to find the right tool that aligns with your business goals and assists you in your pursuit of a paperless office.
A digital visitor management tool like Sine enables you to go paperless by digitizing your visitor management processes. With Sine, you can ensure a hassle-free way of getting your visitors to submit their details before they even enter your site. This means you don’t have to deal with the huge amount of paperwork necessary to approve their entrance.
To fill a workflow, you will need to share a unique link with your contractors and visitors and receive the filled information on workflows digitally.
By digitizing this aspect of your business process, among others, you can get rid of all your paper logbooks and documents.
As you transition to a paperless office, you need to monitor how your employees contribute to this process. You also need to observe if they are feeling any issues in embracing this change.
Keep in mind that you need to make certain modifications along the way to ensure that your teams and employees are right on track with implementing paperless processes.
Also, tracking your team’s efforts in embracing the paperless environment will help you quantify the improvements you have made.
As you continue to make consistent efforts towards ensuring a paperless office, you start witnessing several benefits. This includes time and cost savings, increased data and document security, and protected data backup.
With digital tools and cloud-based systems like Sine, you can facilitate this transition and manage your digital workflows more efficiently. Eliminating the need for printers and paperwork in your processes by sharing digital links with your people.
Not only this, Sine offers digital check-in forms, a mobile application, and QR code posters to manage your workplace completely paperless.
