Article by hi joiney
Communication within an Office
Strong communication links are vital to the wellbeing of a team. The most effective links occur naturally- for example, in casual conversation- but these will need supplementing by new technology. How a team communicates internally depends on its size and the location of its members.
The most effective method of communication is informal direct conversation and for this, ideally, team member within the office should have easy access to each other at all times. It is preferred that they sit close by in the area allotted for that particular work force.
If certain members of a team are situated off campus, it is important to establish efficient communication links like telephones, fax, emails, or video, between all the locations to ensure that dialogue can still flow freely between the parties.
There are many methods of communication within an office, whether formally or informally, within its own organization or externally. These include:
1)Constant casual conversational links between colleagues. These create an informal ‘grapevine’ throughout the organisation.
2)Traditional methods of communication such as paper memos, circulars letters, reports, notice boards, faxes, and telephone calls are all part of the methods of communication within an office space.
3)Electronic means such as emails, intranet, internet, and groupware facilities.
4)Video conferencing facilities and video telephones that can reach right across the international business world.
Whatever communication systems are used, remember that they are all supplement to, rather than a substitute for, face-to-face meetings.
Boosting Employee Efficiency with a Paperless Office
Since the first Labor Day celebrations in 1882, we’ve been reminded annually that the productivity of American workers fuels our country’s economic growth. As our economic base continues to shift to information-based industries, electronic content management tools, such as document scanning and eforms, are helping the American worker become even more productive.
Before we discuss the ways document management systems improve efficiency, let’s take a look at one facet that hampers productivity in the workplace. Efficiency studies1 reveal that office workers spend 40-50 percent of their time looking for information and 18 minutes searching for a document. That translates into $14,000 worth of productivity lost per worker per year due to an employee’s inability to find the data they require to do their job!2
Key business processes requiring rapid and accurate transfer of information, i.e. accounts payable, customer service and credit approvals, can sap the American worker of the ability to produce if locked into paper-based systems. On the other hand, workers become less stressed, more efficient and more productive when given such tools as workflow automation, eforms and robust document scanning and document management systems to maximize their efforts.
What Form Should the Future Take?
Here’s another interesting fact: eighty-five percent of business processes depend on forms1, which means there’s no better way to improve productivity than to reduce the time it takes to create, distribute, complete and integrate forms into a company’s operations. Streamlining key business processes with electronic forms allows workers to capture data automatically, initiate an automated workflow, upload data to line-of-business applications, such as human resources or accounting, and store the eform for easy future retrieval.
Save your office time with Electronic Data Storage
If you are in an office, what is the most boring work you have to do?
I guess the answer will be the documentation management. It is the most hectic and equally important work to be performed at all levels of business. Manual documentation work canât be 100% error less. Errors and mistakes are bound to arise in case of manual work.
To rectify this effect of human errors a technique on-site document shredding is introduced in recent past. Document Shredding is not just the simple disposal of everyday documents â it is an invaluable service that deals with the secure destruction of personal, sensitive, confidential, and/or proprietary information your organization has gathered.
The destruction of documents in the shredding part does not mean that your document canât be retrieve. Technically your manual documentation is replaced by off-site electronic data storage. It means that your documents are prepared electronically through machines. From your every day documents to your highly secured documents, this technique of on-site document shredding provides a great advantage to your business.
There are many companies like www.gilmoreservices.com which are providing services like document shredding, document management, electronic data storage etc. Gilmore Services provides document imaging and document management solutions in order to assist your organization to become a âpaper-lessâ office. We offer turnkey imaging solutions consisting of document preparation, conversion scanning, information indexing, long or short term storing, and immediate retrieval of your formerly hard-copy paper documents.
Try to calculate the time that you will be able to save daily if you donât have to do documentation. That saved time can be utilize in some other productive activities and can reduce a great burden of boring documentation. If we try to find out the benefits of document shredding and off-site electronic data storage than what all points will come into your mind? Letâs see. First of all document shredding will provide you proper destruction of all your documents. Secondly, electronic data storage will provide you with systematic and error free data storage. It reduces the burden of documentation and this list of benefits will go on and on.
So documentation management will not only provide you with efficient system of document record but it also save lot of time, money and effort.
The ‘Paperless Office’ In Action. A Real Life Example
The concept of the âPaperless Office’ has been a goal of many law firms and now it seems that it may have arrived! For many years, DPS Software has been committed to delivering integrated solutions to the legal practice. Their solutions bring together all aspects of the legal practice such as case management, accounts and digital dictation in one integrated solution.Â
DPS Software recently rolled out their newest module from the DPS One Office Software Suite. Post Office has been implemented at a large regional firm of solicitors with offices in Bishop’s Stortford, Saffron Walden, Great Dunmow and Cambridge. They have over 250 staff and the efficient receipt, distribution and actioning of their postal items is essential to the firm’s productivity.Â
The process begins with the receipt of postal items, which are scanned onto the system and automatically appear on the relevant Fee Earner’s desktop. The Fee Earner can start working on the postal item as soon as it has been received.Â
The traditional methods of dictating against a postal item apply; the only difference in the electronic post office is that the document is on screen rather than in hard copy. The electronic post office enables Fee Earners to dictate their instructions directly against a scanned postal item and send it with its dictations to their secretary for action. If the postal item relates to a case file, the scanned copy, the dictation and the transcribed work will all be saved against the relevant file.Â
How to Avoid Office Clutter
Avoiding office clutter and mess is important for number of reasons and should not be taken lightly.
Consider how you feel whenever you visit someone else’s offices and the impression that the visual appearance makes. If an office space is littered with papers and looks generally disorganised, on either a conscious or sub-conscious level, clients are likely to link this with your company and form an impression that you’re disorganised and inefficient.
Hygiene is also an important consideration, for both health and legal reasons. A cluttered, messy office is impossible to clean as effectively as an ordered, tidy workplace and germs and bacteria could breed. There were even reports in UK newspapers of a police officer finding a mouse nest amongst a pile of desk paperwork!
Employers have a legal obligation to provide a safe working environment for staff. Disorganised work spaces can be a recipe for accidents and slips and trips and a major cause of injury in the workplace.
A messy workplace can also lead to stress for employees who can’t find things easily and who waste time searching for lost paperwork. Of course, streamlined, tidy workplaces are also much more productive, which is better for staff, customers and businesses.
How to reduce and avoid clutter
