Continuing to rethink the workplace

Today, organisations of all kinds and sizes are adapting to the new digital workplace, which involves rethinking strategies for how and where you work:

• Adapting to remote working while reconfiguring, offices to make them safe and relevant
• Embracing new technologies for information sharing and team collaboration
• Managing and making smart use of your data wherever it’s located — in the cloud, residing on devices, on paper documents, or in storage

In this guide, we’ll look at all of this, as well as what makes this the opportune time for you to rethink how your organisation is making its way in the digital workplace — and how Iron Mountain’s local, all-in-one services for simple, secure records and information management can play an essential role in helping you transform your workplace.

Rethink how you work - streamlining workflows

Rethinking the workplace is all about digitally revamping processes and workflows — taking both customer- and employee-centric operations and making them better. A big part of getting this right is choosing the processes to focus on and analyse how they work:

• Document existing workflows. Pinpoint the manual/paper-based and digital steps that underlie these processes.
• Look at the underlying data. How is it generated and stored? How accurate is it?
• Look at the lifecycle of the information: as part of any streamlining process, you need to develop a records retention schedule that defines how long categories of records should be maintained as active or inactive before they’re destroyed.
• Identify any records or business artifacts that need special handling.

Rethink how you work - the paperless paradox

As the appeal of paper in the office remains strong and going completely paperless is not possible or practical, a better plan is to get the right balance of digitisation, storage and secure destruction.

Here are four key steps to keep in mind:

• Step 1: Get organised. Start by taking a holistic look at the paper records you typically maintain.
• Step 2: Digitise. By making them digital you make them more accessible, secure and able to be digitally mined for data and insights.
• Step 3: Store offsite. If you end up with a few onsite file cabinets or worse, a whole storeroom filled with boxes, consider working with an experienced offsite storage provider such as Iron Mountain. Your documents will be properly labeled and indexed, safe from loss or damage.
• Step 4: Destroy. Getting rid of records in a secure and appropriate way helps streamline operations, reduce the potential for legal and compliance penalties and ultimately lower costs.

Rethink how you work - choosing a digitisation strategy

If you’re serious about transitioning to a new digital workplace, eventually you’ll have to make decisions about how much or little of your paper records you need to digitise.

Here are three ways Iron Mountain can help:

• Backfile Conversion
  This is the logical, first option to consider: a complete scan of all your documents. This puts you on the fast track to the digital workplace and is cost-effective in the long term.
• Image on Demand
  This reduces the initial capital outlay and gets your digitisation effort underway.
• Digital Mailroom
  Consider scanning and indexing paper documents as they are produced or received in the normal course of business. This is typically done in conjunction with Backfile or Image on Demand solutions but can also be performed separately should converting legacy documents not be a top priority.

Rethink where you work - reconfiguring the office

Here are some key ideas to consider as you rethink how a physical office can best support a digital workplace strategy:

• Interactive. Think of a business lounge in an airport where you are free to move around and do different things across a variety of spaces.
• Safe. Allowing plenty of room for people to socialise in a safe way.
• Flexible and controllable. When employees arrive, they enter a well-controlled, well-organised and ultimately safe environment.
• Useable. In the newly reconfigured office, there will be pressure to use every space as effectively as possible.

Rethink where you work - getting remote working right

As you navigate to a hybrid/remote workforce, keep the following steps in mind:

• Assess what worked well and what didn’t
• Make clear your policies on the use of your business’ information systems
• Focus on security
• Make encryption standard practice
• Protect original documents

Rethink how you work - compliance, continuity and sustainability

How you use and manage information has a decisive impact not only on the success of your operations but also on the following:

• The protection of individual privacy — how likely you are to be penalised for compliance violation
• How quickly you can recover after a disaster
• Your impact on the environment

Whether it’s helping you support your remote workers, reconfigure your office space or automate key workflows, rely on Iron Mountain’s array of storage, digitisation, shredding and asset disposal services to help you safely manage and protect your physical and digital resources.

Download the Best Practice Guide for more information.