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March
2009
Building The Less-Paper
Office
Keeping Down Payroll
Managing Your Software
Programs
Safety –
Big Risk For Small Business
 
Building The Less-Paper Office
As soon as a business introduces a computer into
its workflow it is faced with filing and
tracking information in two formats – paper and
digital. In early days of computerization this
doesn’t present too much of an issue, just make
a paper copy of the digital version and put it
in the filing cabinet along with all the other
information on paper about that client or
subject. As things progress though, the balance
between paper and digital transactions starts to
tip towards digital. Orders, invoices and
receipts are delivered as digital forms, banking
is done online, contracts and blueprints are
sent out as email attachments, your accounts are
prepared on a software application and even your
tax file can be sent electronically.
Predictions that electronic documents would
ultimately push out paper altogether generated a
lot of hype around creating the ‘paperless’
office. That’s not realistic. There are still
many effective uses and needs for paper in a
business and that’s likely to remain so for some
time. However, what’s now possible, and highly
desirable, is to create a paperless, i.e.
digital record, for the types of information
your business consistently deals with so you
don’t have duplicate file systems. For instance,
a dental clinic should consider the benefits of
digitizing everything related to its patients –
their dental charts, diagnostics,
correspondence, financial records, scheduling
and so on. A digital record means that all the
information on a patient can be brought together
in one file for easy reference, updating and
sharing with colleagues and the office staff who
need access to it.
Saying farewell to maintaining parallel
workflows, one electronic and one paper,
delivers benefits in work efficiency, in saving
office space, in costs, in information security
– and does reduce paper.
What new hardware and software is needed?
The biggest portion of your planning will go
into identifying the components necessary to
make a less-paper office workable. Simply adding
a scanner won’t make you paperless. You have to
have a number of components that work together
as a whole, not just a few random pieces of
technology.
A scanner to capture images
electronically will allow you to make an ‘entry
level’ start on reducing paper. Get a scanner
with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
capability. This enables you to produce a
searchable PDF version of a document and this
provides a very handy way to look for files or
pull out all files on the same subject. Beef up
disk space to handle the extra demand
that will be made on it for storage of the
electronic documents.
A high res monitor is very useful once
you start doing most of your document work online. For the real road warrior investing in
portable paper replacement devices like a Blackberry and an eReader will free
you up from having to carry paper copies of things like travel documents, itineraries and maps.
On the software side, use Adobe to turn
your scanned files into PDF format. This is a
stable format that keeps the file looking
exactly as it looked on paper. It can be read
online or printed, takes little space, and in
conjunction with OCR can be searched and
amended. Security and confidentiality can be
maintained using anti-virus, firewall,
storage space encryption and file eraser tools.
To make records available to all those who need
them shift from standalone PCs to a client/server setup. After these basic
starting components your conversion upgrades can
be as little or as much as you want.
Locating a document
All that electronic documentation is useless if
you can’t locate things easily or keep related
information together. You need to create an
electronic version of your file cabinet. This is
done by creating folders and placing one folder
in another just as, for instance, you have files
on each individual supplier filed in a folder
inside the file cabinet drawer named Suppliers.
For documents converted using OCR software you
can search using an index term associated with
the document or a number of documents e.g. a
client’s name or a region code.
Making it happen
The computer savvy can create a less-paper
office relatively cheaply by purchasing hardware
items and downloading free versions of the
software components from the internet. If you
don’t have that level of comfort with computers,
then seek help from an experienced dealer.
Maintaining the less-paper office is not
particularly difficult once it is in place, but
it does require a little discipline,
particularly around regular backup of your
records. To get the most benefit, ask your
suppliers and customers to consider electronic
methods of dealing with you when they can and do
the same with them.
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Keeping Down Payroll
In soft economic times cutting back on payroll
usually means laying off employees. As a tactic
it works, but this strategy reduces your
productivity and can end up costing you in the
long run. You will have lost any investment you
made in their training, lost their know how and
will be stuck with the cost of hiring a
replacement sometime in the future when business
starts to pick up again, so avoid it if you can.
If laying off employees is the only option, give
careful thought to how you can maintain
production and customer service. You must elude
a potential downward spiral of poor service
leading to increasing customer desertion. Here
are some suggestions for how to slim the payroll
burden.
Slim the payroll
-
Reduce pay and eliminate raises: a reduction in
pay won’t be popular but if the alternative is
redundancies among the employees they might well
agree to go for it. At least they keep their job
(and you save on payroll) until business picks
up again.
-
Cut back on work hours: this will reduce payroll
without entirely losing the employee. This can
be done by decreasing daily hours or reducing
days per week or moving to so many days per
month. A reduction in hours may be viewed as
preferable to having no job whatsoever. Sharing
the pain among employees will be better for
morale and you get to keep people on hand for
when times improve.
-
Replace monetary with non-monetary incentives:
offering the use of your vacation home or extra
time off in lieu of a money bonus can show that
you understand your employee’s disappointment in
not receiving a cash bonus but want to reward
them for their hard work.
-
Encourage employees to take time off without
pay: canvass employees for those who would be
agreeable to taking a period of time off work
without pay. The deal must be that they are
guaranteed their job back at the end of the
specified period.
-
Incentivize employees to leave: the least
unpleasant way to downsize is to let natural
attrition take care of the job by not replacing
employees who quit or retire. If normal
attrition will be too slow to reduce numbers to
what you need/can afford, then offer employees
an incentive to terminate: grant early
retirement with full retirement benefits or
offer an attractive severance package. Make
clear this is for this occasion only.
-
Make use of independent contractors: hiring is a
long-term commitment. Until things improve, soak
up extra workload using independent contractors
instead of putting on workers.
-
Insource: maybe some jobs you are currently
outsourcing can be economically brought back
into the workplace to be done by underutilized
employees. Be careful not to breach employee or
supplier contracts. Do this only if there is a
distinct cost/benefit advantage over the
outsourcing deal.
Reduce the cost of producing payroll
The actual cost of producing the payroll
(calculating pay, producing checks or making
deposits and keeping track of employee
information) is itself an area where savings can
be made.
- Outsource payroll: organizing each
payroll is a time consuming process with an
element of danger added because of the
possibility of making a mistake. There are
regulations and procedures that need to be
navigated with forms and returns to be completed
accurately to get it right. It may be more cost
effective to outsource payroll to an online
service provider who will carry out all
procedures in accordance with the latest
regulations, insert this information into the
correct forms and have payroll processed.
-
Use direct deposit for salaries: a good
way to save money is to use direct deposit of
payroll (DDP) in place of issuing paper payroll
checks. There is a significant cost differential
between an online transaction and the processes
around preparing and issuing checks.
- Extend the payroll period: switch from a
weekly to a biweekly or monthly payroll period
to reduce processing costs.
The best rule of thumb for implementing any
restructuring of work practices is to be honest
and upfront with employees and communicate the
reasons that make the changes necessary for
business survival. You also need to be mindful
of the terms of existing union agreements and
work with the union to achieve a conflict free
alteration of procedures. And always take expert
advice in labor related decision making to avoid
breaching labor regulations.
To Top
Managing Your Software Programs
Software programs (applications) are the whole
reason PCs are such great productivity tools
today. There are literally thousands of software
applications available for the Windows operating
system. Using the tips below to manage the
applications you have installed onto your PC
will keep it working efficiently and ensure you
don’t waste valuable disk drive space.
Uninstall unused programs (DIY safe)
Over time you will have installed new versions
of software or maybe changed over to an
alternative brand product, tried out trial
versions and even forgotten about applications
you once installed but no longer use. Unused
applications don’t just go away, they sit there
taking up space on the hard drive until
deliberately removed. Simply deleting the folder
that contains the program doesn’t actually
remove the program itself. That must be done
through an uninstall process. Almost every
application, utility and game sold today comes
with an uninstall program and your computer
should have a provision for listing all the
programs installed on it with an option to
individually remove them. Every two or three
months use the PCs ‘Add or Remove Programs’
utility to look over the list and identify any
applications you longer have use for. Select the
program and choose to remove it. This will free
up extra space on your hard drive. You may have
to restart your computer after removing the
program(s) you don’t use to complete the
process.
Turn off programs not in use (DIY safe)
Moving from task to task usually means opening
up a number of applications. All those you
aren’t using still continue to run in the
background using up processing power until they
are turned off. Unless you intend returning
frequently to a particular program you have
started up, turn it off after use.
Limit how many programs load at startup (DIY with caution)
The more programs your computer has to start up
when you turn it on the slower the boot up
process will be. Then, having these programs
continue to run in the background consumes
processing power. It's a good idea to check what
programs are auto-starting and remove any
unnecessary ones. They can always be started
manually when needed. Windows provides a tool to
identify and turn off the programs that
automatically launch at startup. In addition to
these items there are other things that start in
the background that can only be seen using one
of the special utility applications available
commercially. Both work the same way - they
locate and list those programs that begin at
startup. The trick is to know which it is safe
to turn off. A quick search on the internet for
any file name you can’t identify will generally
turn up a lot of pages explaining what the file
does in your Windows operating system
environment. Never turn off an item in the
Startup window unless, or until you know what
that file really does in relation to how your
computer’s operation will be affected. Many
programs may launch on startup through default
settings in their install instructions. When
installing a new piece of software check the
default installation choices carefully and turn
off the option to begin running at startup if
you aren’t going to be making heavy use of this
application.
Remove unnecessary shortcuts (DIY safe)
Do not clutter your Desktop with a lot of
shortcuts. Each shortcut on the desktop uses up
to 500 bytes of disk memory. You can delete any
shortcuts from your desktop that you don’t want
by dragging them to the Recycle Bin. Deleting
the shortcut does not uninstall the program.
Turn off unnecessary features (DIY safe)
Many applications come with added features that
could be quite irrelevant to you. For example,
Google comes with a sidebar full of applets that
displays news headlines or stock quotes and
Windows Vista includes a nice looking, but
mostly useless sidebar. It’s usually possible to
turn off these add-ons to save some precious
memory.
To Top
Safety – Big Risk For Small Business
As an employer, you bear a legal responsibility
to protect the health and safety of people in
your workplace. It is a huge mistake to believe
that your business is accident proof and now is
definitely not the time you want to get hit with
a payout to an employee or customer who suffered
injury on your premises.
DON’T PANIC, implementing good health and safety
measures does not have to be complicated,
expensive or time consuming. Get started with
these common sense occupational safety and
health practices.
Fire Safety And Electricity
- Undertake a fire risk assessment
- Keep basic fire fighting equipment on hand
- Regularly inspect fire fighting equipment, sprinkler and alarm systems, wiring, heating, air-conditioning equipment and refrigeration units
- Train employees in emergency procedures
- Display posters about how to deal with fire and electrical faults and include phone numbers to call in case of emergency
First Aid And Accident Reporting
- Appoint a suitably trained employee as First Aid officer
- Offer training to other employees in first aid techniques
- Train employees to report and log accidents
Hazardous Substances
- Identify and document procedures for the handling of all hazardous substances
- Train employees in the proper procedures for storage, dispensing, moving and using hazardous substances
Manual Handling
- Do a risk assessment – which tasks involve manual handling, can any be automated?
- Train employees how to handle heavy loads
Work Equipment And Protective Clothing
- Provide suitable and adequate work equipment and protective clothing
- Keep equipment and protective clothing maintained
- Train employees in the proper use of equipment
Workplace
- Check that the workplace/customer areas meet regulation standards for ventilation, lighting,
temperature, cleanliness and size of working/walking areas and keep areas rubbish free
Insurance
- Take out employers' liability insurance
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