HIGH COST OF PAPERWORK

HIGH COST OF PAPERWORK

Inc. Magazine (May, 1993) provided the following paper statistics (sourced from Lawrence Livermore Labs; Coopers & Lybrand.)
In the average office:

- 19 paper copies are made of each original document.
- 7.5% of paper documents get lost completely.
- 3% of the remainder get misfiled.
- $20 in labor is spent filing or retrieving a document.
- $120 in labor is spent finding a misfiled document.
- $250 in labor is spent recreating a lost document.

COST OF A MINUTE

If you're earning $50,000 a year, every minute is worth 50 cents. At $100,000 a year, your minutes will be worth $1.00 each. How would you like $1.00 every time someone has told you, "Wait a minute?"

THE EFFICIENT EXECUTIVE

Someone suggested that you could easily solve the problem of taking work home: "Don't go home!" A less drastic solution, however might be to increase efficiency on the job. If you manage your time well, utilize all idle time, work on priorities, and take advantage of timesaving techniques and equipment, the necessity to take work home should be eliminated. Unless, of course, you are trying to do the work of two people.

 

TIME FOR LETTERS

According to Dianna Booher, in her book, Clean Up Your Act (Warner Books, 1992) the average writer takes approximately sixty-five minutes to compose a one-page letter. Reduce this time by having sample letters categorized by topic and stored electronically. And make sure everyone who is required to write has taken a brief course on effective writing.