The average person uses over 700 pounds of paper every year!
With this huge amount of paper used (and often wasted), many businesses are trying to take drastic measures to reduce their everyday office paper usage.
Some are even trying to become completely paperless, always opting for digital documents over paper files.
Going paperless is great for the environment. Not only does it significantly reduce your environmental impact, but it can also save you a lot of money on office supplies.
Most businesses want to use less paper but aren’t sure where to start.
How does one actually undergo a digital transformation to become a paperless office?🤷♀️
Do not fear, we are here to help. You can think of us as your fairy godmothers that are helping you along your way towards only using completely paperless processes.
In this article, we will talk you through ten tips to help your business when striving to become a paperless office:
Important disclosure: we're proud affiliates of some tools mentioned in this guide. If you click an affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, we will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (you pay nothing extra).
1. Set A Goal 🥅
One of the big struggles of going paperless is getting started. We suggest that you set paper-saving goals for everyone at all the steps of your business processes.
Most employees would probably agree that going paperless is a good idea, but they won’t take action until they’re told to.
You need a strong leader to come up with plans and policies that are implemented into everyone's daily routine.
Create a set of goals and targets that center around paper-saving, that everyone has to reach within a specific time frame. This gives your team something to work towards and increases the likelihood that they will be successful at using less paper.
As time goes on, alter the targets until no paper is being used at all in your company. Ta dah! A paperless environment.
Targets to start you off could include things like keeping the amount of printing done under a maximum amount, or the number of packs of paper ordered under a set amount.
Start with small, achievable goals to get people used to using less paper.
Then begin gradually moving the goalposts to decrease the amount of paper that gets used around the office even further.
Offer rewards for reaching these new targets, such as a Friday happy hour in the office, or other incentives to encourage everyone to get involved.
Gamifying the process is a good way to keep everyone motivated and working towards the main goal - a paperless office.
If you find that after all of this that your team still isn't on board then it may be a good idea to educate them on how increased paper usage directly links to an increased environmental footprint.
Explain to them the long-lasting environmental benefits of using a paperless process over a paper process.
We are sitting in the 21st Century with global warming being front and center in today's news - accelerated to dangerous rates by the increased emission of greenhouse gases worldwide.
With greater understanding, why wouldn't they want to do everything in their power to reduce their carbon footprint?
2. Think Digital 💻
Go digital with your document management.
Haven't you heard? Electronic documents are the talk of the town.
It may seem like a simple solution, but the best way to work towards a paperless office is to find a digital approach to document management that works for your average office worker.
There are plenty of software options to help you store and manage all of your digital documents very easily.
Going digital actually provides your business with better document security. Taking documents online means they can only be accessed with secure passwords, with the majority of your data stored in the cloud.
These added password security measures wouldn't be possible with a dependence on paper. More likely than not your papers would be stuffed into a file cabinet somewhere or they would even be lying strewn across your desk for everyone to see.
Using a digital form means that you can easily access all your documents from different devices, which, besides using less paper, is a more convenient method of document management anyway.
Documents in the cloud also make it much easier to allow your team to work remotely, or for you to access documents while on-site with a client or during meetings.
Cloud storage is also easy to back up, protecting your important data in the case of computer failure, or the loss of physical documents thanks to water or fire damage.
If your documents are still stored in filing cabinets, it’s time for a more modern upgrade.
This will save space in the office, use less paper and be a lot more convenient and user-friendly for not only you but also for your team.
3. Learn How To Organize 🗄
If you are putting new client information into a digital database it is easy.
However, you will likely still have some paper documents in the office from previous or historical clients, that need to be digitized.
Start by organizing this paperwork into different piles or folders.
Get all the documents neatly lined up, so you can see what you have, and get ready to copy the information across to the new digital platform.
This is one of the most time-consuming methods for going paperless but it is one of the most worthwhile.
Don’t waste hours of time typing everything up.
Instead, scan in all the documents and save them to your new system of data management. Nowadays, you can even do this from your phone by using apps like Pocket Scanner.
When you have digital copies of everything, you can recycle the paper copies, and make your business practically free of any paper.
Scanning all the documents can be delegated to interns, or you can hire a document scanning service to get it in a digital format without taking up as much time from your business.
Once everything has been recycled, you can get rid of the filing cabinets and free up a lot more space in the office.
4. Digitize Everything 💽
Send emails instead of letters.
Most businesses send letters out from time to time, but this is usually not as necessary as you might think. With all the paperless software out there, there is no reason to be using pounds of paper.
You might have important letters that your customers need to receive. This could be a notice about an outstanding payment, or information about an important change in your company.
No matter the reason you’re sending letters out for you can always change the letters into emails.
Send people any information in a digital format, instead of using paper, to greatly reduce your usage of paper.
Even if what you’re sending needs to be signed, there are ways to get an electronic signature instead of wasting more paper.
All of your marketing materials should be paperless too. You don’t need to send out leaflets or brochures.
Instead, create an email marketing list to send out marketing materials.
It is easy to send out any marketing materials via email instead of creating paper products that most people will just throw out anyway.
There are even plenty of email marketing tools out there to help you automate this process.
If you are sending important emails that are replacing tracked letters, use read receipts, so you know for sure that the mail has been received and read by the person you’re sending it to.
5. No More Paper 📃❌
It is time to make the transition from paper to paperless.
Even if you are a magazine publisher you can take it all online and become a completely digital magazine.
Swap to online invoicing and payroll. Since creating an invoice online is not by any means difficult, you shouldn't have any problems in that regard.
When you’re thinking about reducing your paper waste and becoming a paperless office, you are probably focusing mostly on actual sheets of paper coming out of the printer.
However, your business is also generating a lot of paper use through things like checks and invoices as well.
If you still send out paper checks to pay your team, then your business is doing things in a very old-fashioned way.
Sending out physical invoices to clients is also pretty out of date. Checks and invoices make up a huge portion of the paper that a company uses. Instead, switch to an electronic method of running your payroll.
There are lots of different options for accounting software that your business can use. With these, you can manage payroll, send out digital paychecks, electronic invoices, and more.
With all your payments handled electronically, there’s no paper generated by invoices, checks, bills, or receipts.
Electronic accounts are also much easier to keep track of!
6. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle ♻️
What about the paper other businesses are creating on your behalf?😅
Switch to digital bank statements. While you’re thinking about reducing the paper that is generated by the handling of company money, you should reach out to your bank for further help.
If you are getting a paper letter or bank statement through the mail on a regular basis, then this needs to change.
All that paper is a real waste and takes up a lot of storage space around the office that you could be using for something much more useful.
👉It is very easy to reduce the amount of paper that your bank sends you in the mail.
All you need to do is contact your bank and ask them to switch to sending you digital statements and communication instead of paper.
Many banks are starting to automatically make this paperless switch anyway.
If you’re still getting paper statements, then make sure you switch right away to drastically cut the amount of paper that comes into your business.
In the event you still have paper stacking up in the office (or simply have some pizza boxes to recycle after a team lunch), you can always do your best to reuse it or recycle it when possible.
It's definitely one of the most useful habits to build in the office.
7. Collaborate With Your Team, Digitally 📠
If you’re trying to go paperless, you might be concerned about what will happen when your team is working on a project together and needs to collaborate with someone from another department.
Usually, they will print out the work they have done and take it to the person as a physical document.
This method is completely unnecessary in the modern office.
You don’t need to physically share anything when there are lots of solutions to sharing things digitally via the cloud.
Use apps to share things amongst your team.
Storage apps like Dropbox or Google Drive are useful to let you share documents and other kinds of files with lots of other members of the team.
With these tools, you can work on the documents together, at the same time, but from different locations.
Not only does it reduce the total amount of paper waste your team produces, but it also significantly positively impacts productivity.
This digital change prevents people from working on multiple versions of the same document without realizing it since everyone is using one central document.
This one central document can then be digitally shared with all the different members of the team and worked on at the same time with changes updating in real-time.
👉And all without needing to use any paper at all.
8. Printing = Bad 🙅🏽♂️
Make it harder to print things.
Most offices have multiple printers in them, and if you’re trying to reduce the amount of paper that your office uses, then you’re probably watching these printers very closely.
Unfortunately, lots of people will be heavy paper users and just print things out of habit.
To reduce the amount of printing that goes on in your office, make printing a much harder thing to do.
👉Get rid of all but one printer.
If you’re going paperless, you don’t need more than one printer. Ideally, you want no printers, but leave one during the transition.
Next, put in place some rules that turn printing into something that people will see as a last resort.
You could put a printing fee in place, so people have to pay to print. This money can be saved and go into a pot for staff parties or donated to charity.
Whatever you decide, people will be discouraged from printing.
9. E-Signatures - Good Call! 🔏
Start using digital signatures. One of the first challenges that businesses face when they go paperless is working out how to manage signatures.
A signature might be needed from you or a client. When this happens, it’s easy to automatically assume that the only way to do this is to send out a paper document to get a physical signature.
In fact, there is a simple way around this.
You can use digital signatures. These offer a secure way for people to sign documents online.
All you need to do is send the contract or other documents via email or a secure folder in the cloud. This can then be signed digitally using e-signature software, with no need to use any paper at all.
Let's delve a little deeper into some of these e-signature software options:
- DottedSign: this digital tool allows you to sign, assign & manage documents online in a secure and legally binding fashion.
- Adobe Sign: this tool integrates seamlessly with Adobe Acrobat for PDFs, which makes your entire paperless process a lot easier.
- PandaDoc: with this tool, you can create documents from scratch and then send them off to get signed in an instant.
- DocuSign: a number of applications and tools for automating and connecting the entire signature and agreement process
10. Offer Something In Return 👏🏼
Provide incentives. You’ll be able to reach your paperless goals much faster if your whole team is eager to participate.
If half your employees aren’t interested in this initiative and don’t make an effort to help out, you’re going to find it very hard to achieve your paperless goal.
To counteract this, give them a reason to go paperless and join in your paper-free drive.
Offer incentives and rewards for staff members that are making the most effort to reduce their paper use.
This can create an air of friendly competition between members of different teams as they all try to become the most eco-friendly employee and earn those rewards.
You could offer incentives like gift vouchers, extra vacation days, or anything else you think would appeal to people in your office.
Despite what you might think, it isn’t that hard to go paperless in a more modern office.
Conclusion☝️
With these tips in this guide, you can make easy changes to the way you manage things around the office, staff attitudes, and standard practices. These changes will in turn help you to make the switch and get rid of all the paper in the office.
By going paper-free, you can make the switch to more modern, collaborative ways of working both in the office and with clients.
You will also spend a lot less money on paper and other paper-based supplies, and by using less or no paper, you can make your organization a lot kinder to the environment.
Some offices may not be able to get rid of all the paper that they use, especially if you are working in a more traditional industry or with more old-fashioned clients.
But, even if you can’t go entirely paper-free, you can do a lot to drastically cut the amount of paper that gets used, and still enjoy the benefits of being greener, saving money, and using online tools to work.
👉Are you struggling to get clients on board with your new paper-free initiatives?
Why not share with them how the change is benefitting your business, such as the savings you are making, to try and encourage them to make the switch to a more paper-free office as well.
We are all in this together! Good luck!