Go paperless in a painless manner
DOES THE sight of reams of paper and the stacks of files on your desk scare you? How about those pricking pins and clips that keep sliding away from your fingers? How like you wish that - one day you enter your cubicle and find that all that dog-eared rummage was gone forever! Is it really so easy to replace the feel of a paper with the click of a mouse?
Papers and files adding up to the already existing piles in the office is a common scenario. But then, the ongoing automation at the workplaces is marking the death knell of the so called hard copy.
We keep hearing people say that 'ours is a paperless office.' What does a paperless office mean? An office cannot go paperless in the 'literal' sense; it can only reduce the amount of paper being used for official purposes. It is an eco-conscious approach; as saving paper leads to a reduction in deforestation and thus helps in conserving the environment . Organisations insist on going paperless not just for saving costs but also for creating that clean, clutterless office image for its client's sake. The general notion is that modern corporate offices are clutter less, in other words more of automation and less use of paper .
If you are one of those who planning to get rid of the unnecessary junk and transform your office into a paperless one, then here are some tips for you :
Rely less: The less you rely on paper the more uncluttered and cleaner your office will appear . Cutting down the usage of paper in the office will lead to an increase in saving the company's resources.
Adopt new filing methods : It's time you take leave of your manila folders and start storing the data in the form of computer files.
Centralised filing: Use the main office server to create a centralised filing database where data pertaining to all the departments in the organisation is stored categorically.
Allow individual access: See to it that all the employees in the organisation can gain access to the stored data by using their member login id of the company's intranet.
Easy to save & retrieve: Through server filing, several chests of files can be compressed into a single GB file. File the data in such a way that by typing the first letter of the file's title, the required file will appear ready to view on the desktop.
Money saver : This will not only cut down the cost incurred on buying and maintaining those chest of drawers, it will actually make the searching for a file easy and less time-consuming.
Total security : The more restricted access to official data is, more secure the information will be. Automation of the information and assigning passwords to the database leaves no place for the office boys or a bunch of keys in this system. Only those associates who really require the information can gain access and the files accessed by them and information gathered will remain secure.
Automatic back-up: The moment a file is created a back copy of it should be made instantly. Remember that it is these back up files that come for organisational rescue during a crisis.
Create an internal policy: Organisations should create a specific policy regarding the kind of data that should be stored on a company server and what type of information should be documented on a paper. Do not enforce these changes in your organisation with haste. At first, convince your employees about the necessity of your office going paperless and how it will improve the organisational functioning.
Paper has become such an essential part of our lives that expecting it to disappear overnight is a ridiculous notion. What doodling on a word document can give you the same pleasure as you derive from doodling on a paper? People still don't completely trust technology to save their work and protect their information. They still believe that there is always a chance for the technology to go kaput at the right time. It is this fear that keeps them from letting their papers go.
The fact that you can actually carry your entire office work along lures the executives into making theirs paperless. The next time your boss asks for a particular file you need not frown at him. Just give him a file-sharing access or give the password of that particular database.
SANDHYA. U
faqs@cnkonline.com
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