Top 5 Things to Aid Towards a Paperless Office
2020 saw many of us leaving the office, instead working from our beds and our living rooms. Joining video meetings in a shirt and pyjama bottoms.
But now, as in the UK at least, it seems as though offices may be opening back up, it is time to consider some of the positives we can take from the last year. One such positive is the reduction in paper usage.
Aiming for a paperless office is something we at Elevate Agency have had our eyes on for a while now, and we believe for the environments sake it is something every company could work towards.
Not only is it good for the environment, it’s cost effective for your business as well: in small-to-mid sized businesses, 65% spend between $1,000-5,000 monthly on paper processes.
With this in mind, we’ve broken down 5 easy ways your business can reduce paper usage and even aim for a paperless office…
Here at Elevate we are massive fans of the Rocketbook vision – keeping the feel and ease of paper-based notepads, integrated with future-thinking technologies and the environment in mind.
The Rocketbook Core is a great way to reduce paper usage in your office. Its pages look and feel like normal paper but are actually constructed from a polyester composite. This means that, when using a Pilot FriXion ink pen, the pages can be wiped clean by a moist cloth and reused.
But that is just the start. Each Core page features a QR code and 7 symbols at the bottom of each page. Using the Rocketbook app, you can create links between these symbols and any major storage system online. For example, you could link the Star symbol to a specific folder in Google Drive. Simply mark the symbol, and using the app, you can scan a page of the notebook, and it will automatically upload this page to the folder you link it to. You can even add a # symbol either side of a word or phrase, and this will be the name of the file.
Productivity and task tracking tools are abundant but are yet another way to reduce your offices paper needs in a big way. Here at Elevate Agency our team use Monday.com as a productivity tracker and task manager. It allows collaboration between team members, is easy to segment and split off separate teams in different work areas and integrates with Zapier.
Using a productivity and task tracking site like Monday.com cuts down on paper usage in the office, as all notices, tasks, and communications can be done through the interface rather than on paper. Monday.com can be accessed in-browser or through apps on the Apple and Android store, so tasks and notices can be seen anywhere.
Talking of notices, both Slack and Microsoft Teams are excellent applications for keeping up to date with your team, putting out announcements, or sharing documentation. Many businesses have been utilising the likes of these two to increase productivity.
However, their impact on paper reduction cannot be understated, by removing the need for paper announcements. Further, any documentation can be sent on Slack or Teams with ease, rather than physically handing over paper-based info. Combine this with Rocketbooks technology above, and you could even send sketches from a Rocketbook Core through Slack using Google Drive integration.
One of the major stumbling blocks stopping offices going fully paperless is legal documents that need customer or employee signatures. Often, scanned documents wouldn’t be accepted or wouldn’t be high enough quality.
Now thanks to the E-sign with Adobe Acrobat Pro, you can send contracts, invoices, legal documents, and anything else that requires a signature. The recipient then adds their signature, which is digitally verified before sending back to you.
This is a huge step to removing paper from the office environment, and one that will cut back on your businesses paper costs massively.
5. Dual-Monitor Setup
A more experimental tip, but one that can be easily implemented in an office environment or even at home. Using a dual-monitor set-up gives you additional space to work and most importantly in this case write notes. This removes the need to have paper notes for when you are working on a single screen with only one document open. Using a note-taking application like Evernote means not only will you be using less paper, but you will also have all your notes in one place.
Like having a notepad to jot down ideas while working? The Rocketbook Core we mentioned earlier is the perfect wasteless alternative to this and again keeps all your notes in one place.
