You know, folders for days of the week/month, whatever, where you file actual printed paper you need to follow up on.
I was trained to do this by a woman who would break thumbs if her employees didn’t. And honest to og, it has saved my ass so many times and given me the rep. around the co. as a tenacious person who never forgets things and follows up always.
So cut to today. I am leaving the company, and I need to train my replacement. This is a 25-something, naturally with good computer skills. She’s made the file cabinet per my instructions, but I certainly get the feeling she’s humoring me, and will keep all of her follow up on her computer.
Ok, times change. Some of the things in my FU-file are very large, physically, and no, I never considered scanning and filing electronically. Just saying.
So, will she be able to keep all of this kind of follow up on her computer? Like large files of instructions for annual events, multipage documents with instructions for sales promotions and redemption of rebates etc.?
Yes, I won’t be here, and I shouldn’t give a shit, but that’s a hard thing to just cut off, and the co. owner has been very good to me for almost 25 yrs. She’s a former admin. woman/girl (sorry), and this is a much higher level position–I think she can handle it but I want to give her every chance in the world not to fail.
I’m not sure that I’m understanding what is concerning you.
If you are printing documents that come to you electronically and putting the hard copies in the filing cabinet, then certainly she could keep an electronic followup file that has the electronic files in it. All of my followup is done electronically and anything that someone else needs to see is on the shared drive of my organization. This has the benefit of not having to be at my own desk when I need something; I just sign in wherever I am and there it is… Also, those electronic files are searchable, so if I have a tiny bell ringing in the back of my mind and can only remember a phrase I can still find the document.
If you have been around for 25 years and have ages-old documents that were typewritten and have never been scanned, I suppose it’s going to be up to her how to proceed. Perhaps she will want to scan them and put them in her electronic followup file.
I do both. I still keep physical log books (shipping and receiving) for when my computer dies (which is once every couple years). Since I get requests for electronic files too, I still have to do that method as well.
Way back when, I tried to “go paperless”, but the files I had stored on the network share drive were permanently deleted by an IT guy who didn’t recognize what the files were.
It’s amazing how quickly share drives seem to fill up with peoples “junk”. Every year the IT department tells people that the share drives are approaching capacity again, and to go delete unneeded files. (I bet a lot of that is personal crap, like fantasy football rosters and stuff. )
I’m not sure I understand, why do you think she wouldn’t be able to keep these files on her computer? Has she had trouble being organized before and you think she won’t be able to keep up with everything? Unless the network at the company crashes often, I don’t see how keeping everything on the computer would be an issue. It’s true that it’s possible to be disorganized when saving things electronically and forget where you put things, or to mislabel or put things in the wrong place, or to accidentally delete things, but it’s possible to do all those things with physical files as well. If she was deemed qualified for this position, then she’ll probably be able to handle it, even if she does it differently than you do and it might take her a while to be as big of an expert as you are.
I’ve trained a few employees on various things, and sometimes they don’t do things exactly the way I do, and it feels weird, since I know that my way is good, but as long as they’re not actively doing something wrong, I just let it go. I explain specifically how I do things, maybe with some written instructions, and say that they might do things a little bit differently, as long as they always remember to do X and to never forget Y but don’t do Z because it really annoys the boss.
Personally I prefer to keep pretty much everything electronic. If it was required by my job I could do things with physical files, but it’s not the way I’m used to saving things, so it wouldn’t make me work better, it would just slow me down. She’s probably the same way.
Some smart folks that loved how traditional files were organized and were really effective have duplicated and even improved on the process.
One example: a well known program called OneNote is a GREAT program for people that love spiral notebooks. And it’s electronic. You can ask me about how to do a booth at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens tournament from 10 years ago, and in 30 seconds I have everything on how to do it again to nitpicky details of what actually happened. And I can search on keywords and everything. (I did a "ask the OneNote power user a few years ago and still love the program.)
That whippersnapper will be fine IF they have a good system in place. Doesn’t matter if that system is paper or bits.
When I joined my current client, I was handed The Folder. Well, strictly speaking, a copy of The Folder. The Folder, Jr.
It’s got printouts of every piece of key data for one of the areas I’m responsible for implementing. I got hands on it, went the next room over to IT and asked “hi, I’m Nava; I’m new so I don’t know how things work yet. From what I see, that printer is also a scanner, how do I use it to scan?” and I proceeded to scan The Folder.
It is now in a part of our sharepoint called, curiously, The Folder. People ask me how many materials will Production need? I direct them to The Folder. How do they divide their presplit overheads? The Folder. The Production manager carries the original Folder to every meeting; you shoud have seen his face when he started looking for something in it and I found it faster in the electronic copy.
One of the tasks I’m doing is creating a type of document that is intended to replace the current “change management files” (a SAP PM Notification, for those of you who speak the lingo). You can “staple” other documents to it, you can link it to work orders, to purchases, to financial information, to production lines - and, unlike the physical folders, they can be accessed by more than one person at the same time! You can see what tasks have been created, to whom are they assigned, the ETA, which ones are closed, and if people wrote any notes on them. You can staple documents to individual tasks. And, you can do all this without having to run around half the factory asking “who’s got the dossier on the new boiler?”
Whether people will use them correctly or not is another question; I’ve seen places which beat the hell out of SAP’s Notifications, and others where they’re viewed as “useless paperwork”. But as far as I can tell, it’s got to do with dimensionality and personality: those who use them are the same people who’d dot the is and cross the ts on paper; those who can’t figure out what are they for are the same ones who can’t answer “why” does this or that machine need an upgrade (it hasn’t exploded yet, has it? It’s been leaking like a mofo for years, but they don’t have the records to show for it). And the dimensionality part means that there are places where it makes sense to have them and others which are just too small.
I kept all my important contacts and documents electronically, with only a bare minimum of paper in the physical files. I had a coworker who was used to keeping paper files and printed out whatever he did into the physical files so there would be paper copies and kept all his contacts in a Rolodex.
I’m sure you can guess the next part: server crash, corrupt backup, much data lost, coworker is hero.
The modern equivalent might be printing to PDF and filing it separately - this creates a “hard snapshot” of a document or process that cannot be lost or altered if the live document, spreadsheet, accounting, design, whatever files are modified or damaged.
I have a modest sideline selling books, and while my QuickBooks files will give me any answer I care to ask, I still print invoices to a PDF and file it separately. Even years later I can look up a transaction without having to munge around with outdated QB files or the like. Nothing replaces those “final documents” that come from live work processes… but they no longer need to be imprinted on dead tree slices. Conversely, the ease of pulling things up in live apps does not erase the need for those snapshots.
Any followup I have to do is electronic. I will echo the love of OneNote upthread. I discovered it lurking in my Office Suite and I put all kinds of stuff on it. While others in my office are looking things up or scrounging through papers, boom I have the number or form as fast as it takes to open the program and search.
Your replacement can keep the large dead tree files AND do electronic follow up. If next March she needs to do a task the can out a reminder in outlook or anyone one of several dozen other programs so that next March 1 it pops up “call Bob about the Johnson file”
Then they can pull the dead trees out and make the call.
I spent a large chuck of my early career days in banking, that bastion of tree killing record keeping (perhaps only second to the US Armed Forces in paper retention). I still read an honest to God, printed newspaper every day.
That said, I have spent the bulk of my later career replacing paper based records and processes with automated solutions. I can think of no paper based follow up filing situation that could not be done at least as well, and most of the time much better, electronically (assuming your company has appropriate software available).
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You can ask me about how to do a booth at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens tournament from 10 years ago, and in 30 seconds I have everything on how to do it again to nitpicky details of what actually happened. And I can search on keywords and everything. (I did a "ask the OneNote power user a few years ago and still love the program.)