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Digital Transformation: Going Green is Helping Businesses Save More than Just the Environment

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In 2021, one of the most important global issues surrounds our environment. After years of industrialization and capitalism, humans have taken a toll on our ecosystems and it has set us on a grim path to a devastating future for our climate. Therefore, taking on initiatives such as digital transformation has been a change, for example, that more businesses are beginning to adopt.

By “going green”, which essentially means to reduce their footprint on Earth’s resources, businesses are aiming to recognize this global issue and make real changes. With digital transformation, many companies have naturally been able to convert their paper documents, records, and files to digital. By going digital this means finite resources such as trees, minerals, water, coal can be better preserved and become more manageable. 

Although many companies have been using “going green” as a publicity angle, or utilize it as part of their “corporate social responsibility”,  it is still critically vital that these businesses honor their commitment to actively participate. In 2017, a study found that only 100 companies were responsible for 71% of the worlds emissions.

A study found that where possible, installing solar panels could cut your energy bills in half. When it comes to lights, using LED lights instead of incandescent ones use about 30% less energy and last 25 times longer, saving electricity costs. As most office buildings have a sizable amount of lights throughout the space, this would significantly reduce overhead cost.

With so much of our everyday tasks becoming digitized, it is now easier than ever to reduce the amount of paper businesses use. The company would not only save on printing costs, but also storage costs for filing cabinets or desks to keep the documents safe. Research from Capgemini Consulting found companies who go digital tend to be  50% more profitable.

All these cost savings make the decision to be more eco-friendly in your business practices easy. Plus, you’d be saving the planet too. 


Learn more information on digital transformation.

The History of Filing Cabinets

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When it comes to document management, we have all seen that metal box in almost every office around the globe- a filing cabinet. Usually old, maybe not even in use anymore. For years it was a staple in the workplace—but was it efficient in helping us remember where things went?

Businesses required to keep records of documents resulted in a need for a system to keep all of their information safe. 

After realizing that papers were not required to be tarnished for the sake of filing them, Edwin G. Seibels invented the vertical filing cabinet system in 1898, and revolutionized the way we organize our documents. Before the filing cabinet, most documents had to be rolled or folded up and stored in small holes in the wall, forcing important documents to be tarnished upon storing them away, a problem Seibel was looking to solve with the filing cabinet. 

Yet as time goes on, certain inventions become obsolete. Cell Phones have replaced landlines, cars have replaced the horse and carriage, and although most computers are still produced with printing capabilities, the usage of the filing cabinet is starting to dwindle as documents and records are becoming digitized.

Although at the time the filing cabinet was the most efficient way to store documents, it was never the most efficient at helping us find them again. Essentially, it is nothing but a mere storage locker for paper documents. But when the time comes to find exactly what you are looking for, you might have difficulty remembering where exactly you stored it in the first place—or even more difficulty when Bob from three cubicles down misplaces documents in the wrong folders. 

It all depends on how frequently you are faced with that specific type of document. Think about how many times you get a piece of mail. Unless this mail delivered to you was urgent, it simply gets thrown aside and into a jungle of other unopened mail pieces. 

The human brain remembers memories only as strong as the connection you have to that specific topic. If you received multiple documents about the same thing, you are frequently reminded of it and have a stronger neurologic pathway to that memory. For those who end up having to dive through stacks of paper to find one single document, this may end up happening more often than we’d like. 

Although with time, we adapt and evolve upon the way we do things to make our lives easier. The filing cabinet helped documents stay in good shape, but wasn’t the fastest way to find a document. Now, with the development of digital document management, a quick search will bring up all of the files that you are looking for without diving through a stack of papers. The future is a beautiful thing. 

Learn more on how digital document management is evolving and how your business processes should to here.

Mental health in the workplace- and how it can affect those working remotely

For the past year and change, many of us have been reallocated to working remotely. Since then, the spotlight on conversations surrounding mental health have illuminated even brighter. Not only have they become more common and normalized, but most importantly, they have become validated. These conversations are bringing to light what many have already experienced for some time—that our mental health can drastically affect our quality of life and the way it impacts our work-life, especially now when so many are working remotely.

It is an entirely new frontier to have these conversations in professional spaces. In recent years, the acceptance of taking a mental health day has become more commonplace, and since the Covid-19 pandemic Sun Life Financial has doubled the amount of personal emergency days from 5 to 10.

Mental health can severely impact focus and performing multiple tasks at once could prove difficult for an employee suffering from these issues. The statistics show a higher number affected than one might think,   Up to 3% of all Canadians will suffer from S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in their lifetime. 

This is most commonly explained by the lack of sunlight one may be exposed to during the winter months. Employees working office jobs may find themselves to very little light exposure as they are inside for most of the day. Symptoms of this disorder are extreme lethargy, consistent low mood, and irritability, and this most often presents higher employee absence and lower productivity. These days, when many employees are working from home, it is even more vital to give them the tips they need as they can feel even more distanced from support.

As a result from S.A.D, employees may judge themselves as lazy or incompetent. It is vital to support employees during this time and acknowledge that they are doing their best.  Here are a few ways an employer can support their employees through S.A.D:

  1. Help break the stigma and open the conversation around mental health first
  2. Leverage remote work tools and solutions to provide employees with all the company resources available 
  3. Promote a work life balance, if feasible allow employees to have flexible hours
  4. Encourage staff to take their breaks
  5. Stress the importance of unplugging from their phones 
  6. Schedule 1-on-1 meetings once a week or every other week to help them feel connected 
  7. Create a good working environment, ensuring they have a designated break room
  8. Organize virtual employee gatherings 
  9. Ensure employees get the recognition they deserve 

Although the discussion surrounding mental health has come a long way, many may still feel shame in coming forward and speaking about how they are feeling with their managers. This has the potential to turn into a vicious cycle of emotions. To ensure employees feel comfortable speaking about their struggles, it is important for administrators to foster an environment that is open and welcoming so their employees know they will be supported with whatever they need- even if these talks have to happen virtually.

The pros and cons of working from home

A solid year into living through the Covid-19 pandemic, a lot has changed.  We don’t hug, we don’t shake hands, and many of us now are finding ourselves working remotely from home. 

Although some are no strangers to working remotely, the transition to working from home was a new concept for many. Some people love it, some people hate it—but how does it affect the way we work? 

In-person meetings have been replaced by Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meets, and employees that were under the watchful eye of a supervisor now possess a new sense of independence and privacy, along with the most important aspect of working remotely: trust. 

A FlexJob Survey in 2020 found that many workers discovered themselves to be more productive at home, with 95% of the respondents stating their productivity has been the same if not higher, as there were less interruptions and had a quieter working environment. 

A few of the other benefits found in this survey include: 

  1. Remote work retains talent 

81% of respondents noted they would be more loyal to their employer if they had flexible work options 

  1. Remote work increases job satisfaction

Remote workers were more likely to state they were satisfied with their job, ranking 57% to 50% respectively 

  1. Remote work leads to increased mental health 

Of the surveyed who do not have access to flexible work are twice as likely to have poor mental health 

  1. Remote work saves you money 

Flexjobs has found that on average a remote worker can save up to $4,000 including car mileage, maintenance, working attire, and more. 

The remote workforce is proving to be more productive and cost effective. For most of 2020, businesses have been scrambling to transition their infrastructures into the digital space for remote workers to access their projects. This trend looks to continue with permanent remote workers. As Consentia’s Director of Operations sees it, “Some of these companies had no choice but to move remote, we have clients who have not been able to process some documents because they have been locked  in the office for over a year, the accessibility of accessing your work remotely is as necessary as ever”. 

Some are missing the routine of getting up and getting ready, grabbing their morning coffee from their local café, and the daily small talk with co-workers at the office. 

Little things that we once paid little attention to are now the things some workers miss the most.  Working from home being the new way of life, conversely, may have its challenges. In a survey of 2,000  workers who transitioned to working from home reported that they waste up to an hour each day toggling between communication apps.

In a survey conducted by Indeed, some workers reported that working from home has affected them negatively, with up to 50% claiming they miss their commute, 73% claim they miss socializing in person with their colleagues, and 45% saying they miss in-person meetings with their co-workers. 

Whether you love it or hate it, It is clear that the way we work will be significantly changed when the pandemic is over. Salesforce made the statement early in 2021 that they believe the “9-5 workday is dead” and believe work should be flexible to the employee and their schedule, and not the other way around. Will the way we work change for good? Only time will tell.

For more information to digitize workflows, visit here.

How the Digital Revolution Changed Us

There is no doubt that the digital age has come with it’s pros- people can have a sense of belonging to any community, regardless of where they live, and digital imaging has allowed us to transform anything we have and put it online. We have a deeper connection to our friends’ lives as we can see a portion of their everyday life, and some of us even make new friends entirely on the internet.  Nowadays, if something happens in the world- news travels fast. All it takes is a tweet made by someone who is on scene, and then it’s broadcasted to the world. With humans so interconnected by the internet now, how has this impacted us? 

Back when Googling was not the common practice to learn about something, you had to read and find the information yourself, be it from a textbook or an encyclopedia. Now, a good portion of our knowledge is transactional. This means our understanding is not as deep as it once had to be, because we know we can access this information at a later date, from another person, or the internet. In a study made by the European Journal of Neurosciences in 2015, they found that individuals who were tasked  to search for specific information online gathered the information faster  than those using printed encyclopedias, but were in turn less able to recall the information they found accurately.

The hyper-connectivity of world events has also impacted how we process and react to information that comes our way. Before, traditional news stations would report on important national stories, in addition to a few local segments. When something important happened, we had the time and emotional space to take it in and think about it. With the speed at which international news is delivered to us now, we are confronted with so many new stories that the severity of them does not affect us the same way they used to before. Unfortunately, with the frequency in which school shootings happen in the US, although we can recognize how awful each news story is, we have become desensitized by the sheer volume of news we are inundated with. Now more than ever, it’s important to put your phone down for a moment and take a deep, long breath. 



For digital imaging solutions learn more about it here.