Whether you’re reducing the environmental impact of your workplace, trying to increase workplace efficiencies, or cutting costs, going paperless at work is a triumph worth celebrating.
So what are the environmental benefits of going paperless? Let’s say your workplace uses 400 sheets per day. Choosing to go paperless would mean that you can save one tree every month, and 984kg of CO2 annually. That’s not bad!
Not only can going paperless help you reduce waste and slash your workplace’s carbon impact, it can offer some major efficiency wins for the workplace. So, ready to go paperless?
Here are 7 steps that, once bedded down, can increase productivity and help your workplace simply work without paper.
What exactly are paper documents being used for at work? What type of documents are employees printing? Can they be digitized? Still receiving snail mail? Can you move your bills and invoices online?
No matter what you’re using paper for - whether it’s marking up and providing feedback on written contracts, marking up drawings for design review, or sharing important policy documents with workers - it’s likely that you can find a digital alternative to each way that you use paper at work.
A simple way to conduct an audit is by monitoring your workplace over the span of a week and making a list of the paper documents that are being used and making a note of what they are used for. This will help you understand what aspects of your workplace operations will need to be digitized. This might include billing and invoicing, feedback workflows or giving and getting approvals on work. Whatever it is, make a note of the work functions, departments or teams that use the most paper and why.
This is a simple one for anyone who needs to sign documents or have documents signed at work. With an e-signature tool, there’s no need to waste time (and paper) printing or faxing a document, signing it, scanning it, and sending it to relevant parties. When you keep signatures stored on a tool like Drawboard PDF, all you need to do is tap or click your mouse to add your ready-to-go signature to any document that you need it added to.
To move your paper documents online, you’ll likely need software that plays well with PDFs. After all, PDFs are sometimes referred to as ‘digital paper’ and with the right tool can act in very much the same way.
With a PDF markup tool, you can mark up in the same way that you would with a pen on paper, without the hassle of printing, scanning or faxing. You can open a document from your computer or your email, make notes directly on the document and flick it right back to your co-worker, client, student or whomever you need to send it to.
Whether this is for document storage, for altering or marking up documents, or adding signatures, a PDF software can do the heavy lifting that the printer and filing cabinet once did.
A PDF software like Drawboard PDF manages PDF documents and enables you to add collaborators to view, edit or sign documents, all in the one place. Keeping all of your documents in one virtual place like Drawboard PDF is a great way to stop documents from getting lost in a trail of email communications or between the hands of workers, clients or contractors.
One important step towards going paperless at work is to overhaul workflows that are heavily reliant on paper. Work in design review for an AEC industry? Do a lot of markings on paper blueprints or drawings? Write and review feedback on paper documents? Or, do you generally work with a lot of printed PDF documents? To make going paperless as seamless as possible, you may need to integrate paperless processes into your company’s policies and get everyone across them. For employees who are used to working with real paper and pen, they may need training to get up to speed with the workplace software that is replacing paper. You may also need to get clients, customers and contractors on board with your paperless systems.
All of this can be done with a PDF software. In the AEC industries, for instance, the design review process can be managed entirely with Drawboard Projects. This includes marking up drawings, assigning issues and keeping track of the status of projects, all in the one software and all without paper.
Going paperless means that you’ll likely need to bring your paper documents to a virtual centralized location, ie Cloud Storage Just like you would in a filing cabinet at an office, you’ll need the ability to store your digital documents somewhere. This means you may need to ensure you have enough storage to manage all of your documents online.
Note: The running of servers that store this data uses energy and emits carbon so to keep your carbon impact low, avoid creating and storing more documents than required.
Last but not least, get rid of the printer in your workplace (if you have one). Once you have all of the tools and digitized workflows in place to replace paper you won’t need it!
Ready to go paperless?
Drawboard PDF and Drawboard Projects are designed to help workplaces work without paper.
Need to do design review for Architecture, Construction, Engineering or Manufacturing? Check out Drawboard Projects for a paperless design review process.
Need a PDF tool to mark up, annotate and collaborate? Try Drawboard PDF.
Want to learn more? Talk to a Drawboard Product Expert.
Whether you’re reducing the environmental impact of your workplace, trying to increase workplace efficiencies, or cutting costs, going paperless at work is a triumph worth celebrating.
So what are the environmental benefits of going paperless? Let’s say your workplace uses 400 sheets per day. Choosing to go paperless would mean that you can save one tree every month, and 984kg of CO2 annually. That’s not bad!
Not only can going paperless help you reduce waste and slash your workplace’s carbon impact, it can offer some major efficiency wins for the workplace. So, ready to go paperless?
Here are 7 steps that, once bedded down, can increase productivity and help your workplace simply work without paper.
What exactly are paper documents being used for at work? What type of documents are employees printing? Can they be digitized? Still receiving snail mail? Can you move your bills and invoices online?
No matter what you’re using paper for - whether it’s marking up and providing feedback on written contracts, marking up drawings for design review, or sharing important policy documents with workers - it’s likely that you can find a digital alternative to each way that you use paper at work.
A simple way to conduct an audit is by monitoring your workplace over the span of a week and making a list of the paper documents that are being used and making a note of what they are used for. This will help you understand what aspects of your workplace operations will need to be digitized. This might include billing and invoicing, feedback workflows or giving and getting approvals on work. Whatever it is, make a note of the work functions, departments or teams that use the most paper and why.
This is a simple one for anyone who needs to sign documents or have documents signed at work. With an e-signature tool, there’s no need to waste time (and paper) printing or faxing a document, signing it, scanning it, and sending it to relevant parties. When you keep signatures stored on a tool like Drawboard PDF, all you need to do is tap or click your mouse to add your ready-to-go signature to any document that you need it added to.
To move your paper documents online, you’ll likely need software that plays well with PDFs. After all, PDFs are sometimes referred to as ‘digital paper’ and with the right tool can act in very much the same way.
With a PDF markup tool, you can mark up in the same way that you would with a pen on paper, without the hassle of printing, scanning or faxing. You can open a document from your computer or your email, make notes directly on the document and flick it right back to your co-worker, client, student or whomever you need to send it to.
Whether this is for document storage, for altering or marking up documents, or adding signatures, a PDF software can do the heavy lifting that the printer and filing cabinet once did.
A PDF software like Drawboard PDF manages PDF documents and enables you to add collaborators to view, edit or sign documents, all in the one place. Keeping all of your documents in one virtual place like Drawboard PDF is a great way to stop documents from getting lost in a trail of email communications or between the hands of workers, clients or contractors.
One important step towards going paperless at work is to overhaul workflows that are heavily reliant on paper. Work in design review for an AEC industry? Do a lot of markings on paper blueprints or drawings? Write and review feedback on paper documents? Or, do you generally work with a lot of printed PDF documents? To make going paperless as seamless as possible, you may need to integrate paperless processes into your company’s policies and get everyone across them. For employees who are used to working with real paper and pen, they may need training to get up to speed with the workplace software that is replacing paper. You may also need to get clients, customers and contractors on board with your paperless systems.
All of this can be done with a PDF software. In the AEC industries, for instance, the design review process can be managed entirely with Drawboard Projects. This includes marking up drawings, assigning issues and keeping track of the status of projects, all in the one software and all without paper.
Going paperless means that you’ll likely need to bring your paper documents to a virtual centralized location, ie Cloud Storage Just like you would in a filing cabinet at an office, you’ll need the ability to store your digital documents somewhere. This means you may need to ensure you have enough storage to manage all of your documents online.
Note: The running of servers that store this data uses energy and emits carbon so to keep your carbon impact low, avoid creating and storing more documents than required.
Last but not least, get rid of the printer in your workplace (if you have one). Once you have all of the tools and digitized workflows in place to replace paper you won’t need it!
Ready to go paperless?
Drawboard PDF and Drawboard Projects are designed to help workplaces work without paper.
Need to do design review for Architecture, Construction, Engineering or Manufacturing? Check out Drawboard Projects for a paperless design review process.
Need a PDF tool to mark up, annotate and collaborate? Try Drawboard PDF.
Want to learn more? Talk to a Drawboard Product Expert.
We are a PDF and collaboration company. We believe that creating more effective connections between people reduces waste.
Our best work has been overtaken by busywork. That’s why we’ve created ways to help people get back to working wonders without any paper in sight.
Drawboard PDF lets you mark up and share with ease, and Drawboard Projects brings collaborative design review to architecture and engineering teams.
At Drawboard, we work our magic so our customers can get back to working theirs.
We are a PDF and collaboration company. We believe that creating more effective connections between people reduces waste.
Our best work has been overtaken by busywork. That’s why we’ve created ways to help people get back to working wonders without any paper in sight.
Drawboard PDF lets you mark up and share with ease, and Drawboard Projects brings collaborative design review to architecture and engineering teams.
At Drawboard, we work our magic so our customers can get back to working theirs.
