

Max Freedman, "How to Create a Paperless Office", Business. What do you think is the most challenging part of "going paperless"? Please share your experiences and ideas. These were the best practices I collected and distilled from several sources. You have to be realistic in setting goals and deadlines. It is important to remember though the extent of paperless transition varies by organizations and industries. Thus, you should also have a reward initiative program in place for when the goal is met to encourage employees to participate in the efforts to go paperless. What gets rewarded, gets done and repeated by others. SET A DEADLINES FOR THE TRANSITION, MEASURE PROGRESS AND REWARD: Set goals for each department and for the company as a whole that encourage everyone to transition to an electronic document management system.

Convince your supplier, or other companies you work with to ease your transition by complying with your digital norms. Possibly you have an existing ERP to drive your business. Do every integration possible with your business operations. INTEGRATE WITH BUSINESS OPERATIONS: Unlike the other considerations, this one requires more work.Give employees digital devices so that they feel it is unnecessary to print various kinds of documents to carry with them. Make your paperless workflow simple, clear and straight forward. You will also need a reliable, fast, intuitive digital scanner if you are planing to do it in-house.
#PAPERLESS OFFICE BEST PRACTICES TRIAL#
Trial as many as you can and see what satisfies your needs best. There are a lot in the market to choose from.

Otherwise, monitor and limit toner purchases across various departments. Minimize access to printer by arranging only a centralized printer. Introduce policies aimed at discouraging unnecessary printing.If they are convinced to try it across the organization, then carefully implement the following: CHANGE THE MINDS OF PEOPLE: If the entire organization is not ready for the change, then start in one / your own department and lead by example.While someone is scanning your active files, you have to take (change management) initiatives to decrease the flow of future incoming documents in paper form (more on change management in the next point).Active documents, when scanned, give a higher return on investment and productivity boosts than inactive ones. Among the necessary documents, differentiate between active (recalled frequently) and Inactive ones (rarely recalled). Categorize what type of paper documents you deal with, which ones are necessary for the future, which ones are not.Don't assign it to a current employee who has other job duties. Hire an intern for the project or outsource it altogether. Take the scanning job as a project with a start and end date.Scanning previous documents can be your first choice as there is no other option, but it should have an end time. And thus it doesn't fit well to the fast-paced digital culture for which you are doing all these things. But anyone who has some experience in scanning knows that it is a time-consuming and boring job. START WITH SCANNING (BUT DON'T STOP THERE): The first venture to a paperless dream often begins with a large-scale document scanning initiative.If you are thinking about a paperless transition either for your department or your entire organization, here are some best practices to follow: Otherwise, the attempt may go in vain in most cases. It requires know-how, persistence and careful attention to specific things. Note that what seems to be an everyday concept, isn't necessarily that easy to implement. It is likely that Covid-19 and resulting Work from Home is going to catalyze this gradual process a lot. More and more organizations and departments within organizations are attempting to go paperless. The "Paperless Office" has been a buzz word in office culture for 3-4 decades now. Transition to a Paperless Office: Best Practices
