s
Paperles
office
Efficiency is one of the quintessential
components of running a successful business. It is the foundation in which the tone
of your entire operation is set. One means
of efficiency that is relatively new to the
scene is the concept of going paperless.
Why and how does going paperless better
increase your office’s efficiency?
First off, it saves you money. For
example, the average cost to maintain a
four-drawer filing cabinet is $1,500-$2,000
a year. Considering that your standard
office will have more than a four-drawer
filing cabinet, there is a lot of money to
be saved by eliminating these space hogs.
Many paperless programs require only a
one-time purchase or set up fee.
Next, going paperless increases efficiency in terms of questions and answers.
If an employee can simply type in a word
to a search and spend 90 percent less time
searching for a piece of information, the
amount that each person could accomplish every day would sky rocket.
Thirdly, a paperless office decreases
errors. With copy and paste capabilities,
along with pre-programed checking tools
and downloads that check for particular
mistakes, there is little room for user error.
There is also more security with a
paperless system. More than 70 percent of
today’s businesses would fail within three
weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss
of paper. Yes, the idea of someone walking
off with that substantial amount of paper
is unreasonable, however, the documents
could be destroyed in a fire or flood.
Lastly, by going paperless, documents
become universally accessible. With the
astounding transformation of technology
over the past decade, we can, in a sense,
carry our entire computer in our back
pocket. If your office were to be hosted
virtually, you could access, maintain and
reference materials from anywhere at any
time. As many franchisees are frequent
travelers, this is a key area in which your
time is more effectively used versus calling
others or waiting on an email to continue
with a particular project.
OK, so you’re ready to go paperless in your office. Now what? There are
Theft Prevention
T
memory to store the video footage; it’s
worth the money and investment! Have
cameras placed in all outside/inside
entrances of the club so you can see
who is coming and going, as well as one
placed in your front desk area, the main
floor, supply storage closets and in the
outside doorway entrances of the locker
rooms and tanning/massage rooms.
Doing this will also help deter employee
theft, as staff will be less likely to steal
from the cash register, safe, lockers and
lost and found box if there are cameras
monitoring them.
Send out no-trespassing orders to
any former employee or member who
involuntarily left on bad terms due to
gross misconduct. The definition of gross
misconduct varies state to state, but it’s
normally defined as any behavior that
shows a complete disregard of employer
rules that
can result
in a serious
by Jessie Dricker
impact on
the business. This includes theft,
profanity, assault and any serious violation of company policy.
Other examples include an employee
that intentionally misrepresents a product,
leaving the company potentially liable for
fraud; employees that are working while
intoxicated, which risks the safety of other
employees, members, company equipment and themselves; and employees
who engage in physical altercations with
another person while working.
JESSIE DRICKER is a franchise owner
and managing partner of Planet
Fitness Vermont.You can reach her at
jessie.dricker@planetfitness.com.
GearedUp | 2015 Issue 1
heft can never be fully preventable,
but measures can be put in place
to make it le