The Paperless Office: Six Ways to Cut Costs and Save Trees

Memos, post-it notes, newsletters, hard copies, HR documents, receipts… a lot of paper floats around the average office, and it doesn’t just litter company desks.  It results in untold numbers of trees being unnecessarily cut down, and costs you plenty of money to boot.  Paper is expensive, and having hard copies of important documents can actually work against you in the long run.  Going paperless will give your important files more security, give your employees some breathing room at their workstations and lower your overhead costs.  Here are 6 easy ways to go paperless at your office.

Nix paper memos.  If you’re just sending out a memo asking employees to wipe up the microwave when they’re done cooking their Cup-O-Noodles, there’s no need to pass out sheets of paper printed with a sentence or two; it’s a colossal waste.  Email provides a quick way to communicate such info without wasting paper, since employees are likely to drop such memos directly into the trash can.

Store important documents electronically, and back them up regularly. You’ll need a dedicated hard drive to store the documents, and a good file backup system. We can’t emphasize enough how important it is to make frequent backups of your files.  Experts recommend using two portable hard drives, and using one to back up the other each week.  The backup should be taken to a secure offsite location like a bank deposit box.

Scan documents and send them as attachments rather than using the copy machine.  Use a dedicated document scanner and teach all of your employees how to use it.  Save the documents in PDF format, which is printable and keeps the document looking exactly as it does on paper.

Use an electronic calendar and appointment setting software, such as that built into Microsoft Outlook.  Such applications allow you to keep a running list of tasks and to-dos, share your calendar with others and set reminders.  In other words, they’ll do a lot more for your employees than the Kountry Kats paper calendars hanging on their cubicle walls.

Provide employees with digital pay stubs.  Just make sure your HR manager knows how to do it properly to avoid potentially catastrophic flubs like accidentally emailing your salary to the entire company.  Most payroll software has an option to automatically distribute virtual pay stubs to predetermined email addresses.

Have inbound faxes sent to your computer system, and send faxes electronically when possible.  Faxed paper documents aren’t usually the greatest quality anyway, and when you request electronic faxes from others, it might get them thinking about going paperless in their own offices, too.

Photo credit: Flickr user Kyle and Kelly Adams