A paperless office? #LetsGoPaperless

Maria
July 28, 2016

It’s no secret that we all want to try and do our bit to help the environment. More often than not there are bins for plastic, paper and general waste in shops and we recycle as much as we can at home – but what about in the workplace? Could we create a fully digital, paper-free working environment?

IDBS is a company that helps researchers collate all of their data onto one digital platform. I’m not sure my work would be able to fully become paperless (I work for a London paper) but having said that we certainly could take a big step towards it.

Printing less
I can’t even begin to imagine how much we currently print in the office, with drafts to approve, picture galleries to create but we can certainly cut down on printing things like emails.

Note taking
Taking notes in meetings could be done on tablets or smartphones. There are plenty of apps out there that would help with this. It’d make it easier to share notes/minutes of meetings too by simply emailing them over. Which brings me onto…

Document sharing
We have network drives for this kind of thing but sometimes it can be easier to have them stored online using Google Docs or Dropbox. This is especially useful for those like me who work some of their days from home.

IDBS have also created this infographic below (click to view a bigger version) which shows us the timeline of how we moved document chaos to electronic lab notebook.

What would you do to take a step towards going paperless?

About The Author

Hello and welcome to Suburban Mum! I'm Maria and I'm mum to two boys - E who's 14 and M who's 11. This blog is about my family, the ups and downs of being a working mum and everything in between. If you want to find out more about me and my family head over to our About us page.

13 thoughts on “A paperless office? #LetsGoPaperless”

Lex @ mumisthewordblog
31st July 2016 at 3:51 pm

I think paperless is something that could be hugely beneficial. Not only for the environment but when finding documents in work, how much easier would it be to load the paperwork up that was stored on a tablet or something rather than fishing through a filing cabinet. Definitely no reason why minutes and agendas can’t be done with technology now. What a different post, was lovely to read something I haven’t before #KCACOLS

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Upside Mum
31st July 2016 at 4:22 pm

Sounds like a good idea and I’m sure we could all do a little and use less paper than we do. #KCACOLS

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alex
31st July 2016 at 9:27 pm

I’m a physical therapist and take patient particulars each treatment. At the moment I still write everything down because I don’t have a fixed work room so taking my laptop would just be one extra thing to carry but I would love an app which could store all the details and then order it into alphabetical order. I feel sure I’m not the only therapist out there who has thought of this but I have spent hours searching and not come up trumps yet! Hear hear to a paperless office! (although that wouldn’t stop me buying lovely stationary)

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alex
31st July 2016 at 9:33 pm

oops – I should have put #KCACOLS!

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Tammymum
1st August 2016 at 2:51 pm

As a lawyer are office was always stacked to the brim with paperwork. We still used paper files! Te weird thing was the paper files was also scanned on to an electronic file! How silly is that. By time I left for maternity leave though serious steps were being taken to make the office paperless or at least to have considerably less paper! I must admit I do like working from paper sometimes and writing but really there isn’t a great deal of need in our modern society. Great post that hopefully gets people considering how much paper they really need. Thanks so much for linking at #KCACOLS. Hope you can come back again next Sunday xx

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Pen
1st August 2016 at 10:03 pm

Excellent idea. I try to recycle my paper but it is not the same as not using it in the first place. Pen x #KCACOLS

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Rebecca
2nd August 2016 at 1:21 pm

I definitely agree with you – minutes and notes could be taken on a tablet or phone. Phones are great for lists too, calendars, diaries, reminders….so many possibilities! It makes it easier and more beneficial to the environment as you say! #KCACOLS

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Nicole | The Professional Mom Project
3rd August 2016 at 2:24 am

I find this such a challenge. I do my best but I really like to have something to hold, highlight and tab with sticky notes (I used to be a litigation lawyer) and it’s just not the same on a computer screen. #kcacols

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One Messy Mama
3rd August 2016 at 3:26 am

!00% agree! #KCACOLS

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Geraldine
3rd August 2016 at 8:09 am

It’s strange but there is some thing to be said for scribbling on a bit of paper. But I Agree, Waste Is Huge! Our recycling bin in work is full to the brim by the end of the month. It’s such a huge waste #KCACOLS

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The Aloha Mummy
4th August 2016 at 5:34 pm

I’m all for paperless but I still have doubts about the reliability if technology…couldn’t bear to lose some if the projects I work on so I always have a print out or handwritten drafts!! Totally defeats the object I know, but I have now gone paperless bills!!! #picknmix

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Mummy and monkeys
4th August 2016 at 8:16 pm

I work in a school it’s definitely not paperless. We did get stopped from colour printing for ages and had black and white displays up which looked rubbish. We do use emails to communicate rather than notes though. Thanks for linking to #picknmix

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Charlotte
15th September 2016 at 1:52 pm

You know, it’s funny… I work from home so I forgot about bringing notebooks into meetings. It’s strange to imagine a world where people are actually bringing in electronic devices–I guess I’d be too afraid of hitting the wrong key and losing all of my notes!

I imagine it’s very difficult to print less when you work in a publishing environment (but what a fun work environment to be in!).

Great post!

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