Workplace labor, particularly of the unskilled and unnecessarily time-consuming variety, has proven the ruin of the global economy amid recent economic downturns. But one piece of software, if adopted in mass, can mitigate—perhaps even overthrow—both macroeconomic and organization-wide issues, reinstating efficient processes and educated workers as the backbone of global economic health. Thankfully, the fate of this outcome rests in the hands of professionals as reliable as the task demands: Human Resources professionals.
Here are 10 reasons why Document Management Software (DMS) can revitalize the global economy through HR managers, directors, and specialists:
10. DMS puts the power of valuable training at organizations’ fingertips. Economic conditions have proven that HR managers must ask how they can develop talent within their organizations instead of acquiring it from universities, staffing programs, or other third parties—especially given consumers’ disdain for the climbing price of postsecondary education. However one chooses to decipher the issue, unskilled labor is the result of insufficient training, and insufficient training can be resolved through DMS: Given that no particular degree from any institution of higher learning perfectly covers what one organization will need, it’s up to the organization itself to define and secure these granular, yet ever-important needs, placing significant demand on internal training and employee development. Going paperless through DMS frees up the time, money, and resources to acquire and train human capital internally.
9. DMS creates time to develop new employees’ knowledge on job-related skills, not inefficient, paper-based processes. With DMS, there is little need to train employees on how to use counterintuitive, outdated applications. The Graphic User Interface (GUI) of Document Management products is intuitive enough to overthrow process-centered training. In lieu of these process-centered training practices, HR managers can develop and implement training programs specific to new employees’ skillsets—generating greater returns on investment.
8. DMS optimizes talent retention. Employees enjoy being valuable assets, and, as a precursor to establishing their value, employees can increase productivity through DMS. If organizations want to retain talented, valuable employees and keep the economy as a whole from suffering the effects of poor employee attrition, DMS can be used to prevent these phenomena given the time and financial resources it allots to the bottom line.
7. DMS creates room for sustainable macroeconomic growth. As cap and trade policies told us several years prior, there isn’t enough room for everyone when it comes to environmentally unchecked organizational growth. Organizations going paperless worldwide would free up room for more sustainable businesses, which creates more jobs, which, in turn, creates greater macroeconomic output—particularly among the burgeoning rate of environmental legislation.
6. DMS optimizes human capital. In economics, human capital refers to the economic value of a person’s or group of people’s labor. Any paper-based office management process reduces employees’ output and, therefore, human capital, increasing the amount of time employees spend walking to printers or searching for existing/lost files. On the other hand, going paperless through DMS optimizes human capital through automation, reduced document and content storage redundancy, as well as cost savings.
5. DMS helps scale back on manual labor. Although paper-based organizational models are seldom viewed as the source of manual labor in lieu of more physically taxing professions, they do induce manual labor—regardless of whether there are white collars about employees’ necks. Therefore, DMS adoption is crucial to keeping employees on task.
4. DMS levels the playing field across cultures and nations. DMS automates and streamlines internal communication and collaboration processes, breaking through the walls of knowledge silos paper-dependent organizations have brought to cross-cultural and cross-national communication barriers in the age of globalization. For these reasons, if DMS were adopted in mass, it would lend to interconnectivity, optimized performance, and streamlined economic progress at the global level.
3. DMS simplifies organizational growth. Organizations growing in terms of both number of locations and number of employees can streamline training processes through DMS, providing oversight and accessibility for training materials at various locations from one point of presence to another—all through satellite and remote access features.
2. DMS continues education in the workplace. Although organizations themselves shouldn’t become educational institutions, tuition reimbursement and forgiveness aren’t presently allotted to all employees worthy of it. However, the return on investment (ROI) over a 20-year span of DMS use is more than enough, if used appropriately, to grant continuing education incentives to employees through HR departments—increasing the value of both employees and the organizations in which they work.
1. DMS is conducive to employee wellness. As employee wellness is brought to light as an important factor in organizational productivity, one statistic is worth noting: Johns Hopkins University reported that paperless health-care environments are conducive to their patients’ wellbeing. If paperless environments can increase the wellness of hospitalized patients, imagine what they can do for functioning employees in health care and beyond.
As an HR director, manager, or specialist, you can play an integral role not only in optimizing your organization’s work environment, but perhaps also the economy’s as a whole.
Benoy Tamang is the CEO of Lehi, UT-based eFileCabinet, Inc. Founded in 2001, eFileCabinet, Inc., began as a 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. For more information, visit www.efilecabinet.com
