Reducing the cost of using paper.

You would think that with all things being digital these days that paper is a thing of the past and because of this, businesses are more environmentally friendly than ever, but think again.

Global paper consumption has in fact increased by 400% in over the past 40 years. In the UK alone each person consumes the equivalent of 4.48 trees per year. When you consider that there are 65 million people in the UK, it means that 291 million trees are lost each year.

In our businesses the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper a year. The cost of a ream of paper (500 sheets) is about £3.50 so each year your business could be spending £70 per employee just on paper, 68% of which goes to waste.

The environmental impact of all of this wasted paper is that it contributes more than 7% of global emissions (higher than emissions resulting from aviation). When taking into account the effects of deforestation, paper use contributes to an additional 11.3% towards global carbon emissions.

It’s hard to believe using paper could be so wasteful and costly note just to the business but also on the environment.

HR has historically been very reliant on paper. Each employee requires the generation of a vast amount of paperwork, from the onboarding process through to when they leave the organisation (and beyond if providing references). There’s then the challenge of storing the sheer volume of paper records, often for a much longer period after the employee leaves the business.

Confidential employee information is often stored in unsecure cabinets or even left in paper in trays presenting security risks that the business can well do without especially with the introduction of the new GDPR legislation.

The costs associated with using paper is not just related to the cost of paper. Paper based HR processes are extremely in-efficient as they increase administration time and costs, not just for HR but for the business as a whole.

With most people now having access to Email and documents from their computers and mobile devices, the need to print documents should be a thing of the past. The key is to provide the right tools to securely store documents and make it accessible to those who it relates to.

Moving your Employee data and HR Process to a secure electronic platform can negate all of these issues. Not only keeping your business on the right side of legislation such as GDPR but also making it more environmentally-friendly whilst saving the business time and reducing costs.

Implementing a HR system needn’t be costly or stressful. PeopleFirstHR can be implemented in a few hours rather than days and not only will you be able to keep all of your employee data secure in one central location but you will be able to benefit from all of the time saving benefits it has to offer.

More information

Contact us to find out how PeopleFirstHR can reduce the cost of using paper in your business.