On average, an office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper per year, with nearly half of these documents ending up in the recycling bin before day’s end. While it may not be possible to completely eliminate paper from your business, for many companies it is possible to drastically reduce their reliance on paper.
Benefits of Going Paperless
Reducing your company’s paper use can have a myriad of benefits for your business. Paper costs your business more than you may know. In addition to the resources used by printing, you must also store and file these documents, costing an average of $1,500 per year per 10,000 documents. If documents are lost or misfiled, as frequently occurs, you lose even more time and money trying to find them. Reducing your reliance on paper documents reduces both your upfront and long-term costs.
Paper is also a fragile medium. If you lost all your paper documents, such as in a fire or flood, your business may not be able to recover. Going digital provides an important insurance policy for your business.
Getting Started
Going paperless is not as hard as it sounds. Here are some tips to get started:
- Find out what you’re already printing. A manual print log will give you a snapshot into what you’re currently printing and will help you focus on where you can make changes.
- Use online and cloud-based applications. While reducing your paper load, it also increases the speed of communication and collaboration between employees and clients.
- Scan documents upon receipt.
- Use online banking. This secure method allows you to easily pay bills and review statements paper-free.
- Use digital document signing. In most countries, electronically signed documents are as legally binding as traditionally signed ones.
- Set up incentives for employees to reduce their paper use.
Reducing your reliance on paper can save your business time and money, while improving the quality of your work. By taking a few simple steps to get started, you can begin seeing the benefits of a paper-free office.
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