5 Painful Conversations Document Management Software Prevents
By Benoy Tamang, CEO of eFileCabinet
If you’re like most employees in the workforce, there are likely people with whom you have trouble working. Although worker traits are as deeply embedded in their personalities as they are capable of causing employee infighting and lowered morale, many disagreements arising in the workplace stem from a far more surmountable issue: the communication barriers imposed by outdated or inefficient technology. Document management software prevents the following five painful conversations in which HR managers would otherwise be forced to play intermediary.
- The ‘That’s Not My Responsibility’ Conversation
Most workers neither like picking up someone else’s slack around the office nor doing someone else’s job for them entirely. However, in a paper-dependent office devoid of document management software, the “that’s not my responsibility’ conversation becomes quite common for several reasons:- employees have a harder time keeping track of information and therefore handling all the tasks associated with this information by themselves,
- lack of a clearly defined workflow and task delegation process, and
- paper-dependent organizations frequently lose and therefore need to re-create information, making many paper-based mediums bad news in general as someone will have to spend time re-creating the lost information no matter how hard they play the “that’s not my responsibility” card.
- The ‘Your Desk Is Distractingly Messy’ Conversation
If you have a messy desk, Forbes.com reports 57 percent of your coworkers are already judging you. However, if your desk isn’t messy, you’ve likely had a coworker or two with a distractingly cluttered desk. Nine times out of 10, the desk’s clutter is comprised of paper products in the form of sticky notes, errant printed documents, or grease-laden paper towels from the office kitchen. What’s more, the smaller your workers’ desks, the more likely an employee sitting near them is to enter the HR manager’s office, pleading for a desk cleanup or some other type of intervention. With document management software and an effective protocol incentivizing employees to use it, the workers who once had messy desks will have cleaner working spaces, and, therefore, happier coworkers unbothered by their clutter-less surroundings.
- The ‘I don’t Know Where That Is’ Conversation
Although less obnoxious at face value, this conversation, as a variant of the conversation seen in point five above, still has a comparatively negative impact on any organization’s bottom line. However, it is still equally characterized by the lack of document management software needed to prevent it. For instance, many aspects of metadata, file naming, file retrieval, and storage templating inherent to document management software make the occurrence of this conversation as likely as a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747.
- The ‘Where’s That Email?’ Conversation
With sophisticated Microsoft Outlook integration, document management software exports email content, messages, and attachments into a template predetermined by the software’s administrator, making relevant files easier to categorize, identify, and retrieve than sifting through an ever-overflowing email inbox would ever allow. These exporting and templating features also provide a repository for workers to retrieve files faster based on lack of email spam clutter alone.
- The ‘I Don’t Want You To Work From Home’ Conversation
Although this conversation is initially more likely to occur between a boss and a subordinate than it is an employee and an HR manager, disputes arising in the initial stages of this conversation between boss and subordinate may eventually require the HR manager to step in and play intermediary. However, maximizing productivity, at times, means letting employees work from home. After all, minor hiccups in the road of employees’ health such as colds, flus, or short-term injuries may make working from home a safer (and more comfortable) bet. The hang-up occurs when security of workplace information and data is brought into question by employees who are permitted to work from home. However, cloud-based, online document management software makes secure access to files from anywhere there’s an internet connection a safe, viable practice.
Pleasant conversation in the workplace is as important as keeping morale upbeat and productive, so don’t leave your employees with issues that lead to infighting and corporate strife; start by learning more about what document management software can do for your organization today.
Benoy Tamang is the CEO of Lehi, UT-based eFileCabinet, Inc. Founded in 2001, eFileCabinet, Inc. began as a cutting-edge tool to digitally store records in accounting firms. As it grew in popularity, eFileCabinet developed into a full-fledged electronic document management solution designed to help organizations capture, manage and protect their data. www.efilecabinet.com