The Modern Office

Changing Workplace Technology – Decentralization

As part of our work, FreeDoc ® has analyzed the record-keeping practices of over seventy major enterprise organizations.  Our experience shows the ‘Modern Office’ is really just a massive hedgerow of shared drives (on-prem, or cloud) filled with unstructured information.  There are very few if any file naming standards, and even fewer processes to weed out old, out dated information past retention.

How this Happened

Before 1990 ‘filing’ of records was done by trained file clerks as a centralized discipline.  The appearance of network PCs erased it overnight and turned it into an individual task done with very little training.  Standardized file naming disappeared overnight.  With every retirement the problem only gets worse.

Loss of standardization makes it difficult for people to find accurate information.  The drag on productivity is substantial.  Research done in 2000* and verified in 2012* showed the average person spends 30% of the paid workday searching information filed by someone else, only to find it doesn’t meet their need.  Or, they just lose time in other ways.

Payroll is the highest expense within an organization.  Reducing this productivity loss by re-assigning even ten-percent can increase huge performance gains, and reduce turnover!

Benefits of Standardization

• Increased employee satisfaction and tenure
• Increased service to the public market
• Increased security to the enterprise

In this light-hearted presentation given to Seattle ARMA Washington State employers, FreeDoc ® Managing Consultant Peter Frix shows the relevance and benefits from structuring records into a serialized data base.

* IDC (2000); McKinsey (2012).

** Disposition Authority Number (DAN) – Washington State Common Records Retention Schedule (CORE).