Let Paperless Drive Productivity

Freeing your staff from admin to focus on more meaningful tasks has surprising effects on your retention rates—and your bottom line.

Ignite your team’s passion.

If your back-office is run on traditional lines—with filing cabinets full of completed forms—the following scenario might be familiar. Glance over at your wonderful staff. Sitting at the spa reception, or out on the water leading a session. Your ad lured them in, with the promise of working for a terrific, body-positive business as part of a close-knit team. But they’re knee-deep in admin now, their passion is fading and staff turnover is up. What positive actions can you take to re-energize and engage your hard-working team to improve staff staying power?

Up with activity, down with admin.

Admin creeps up on you, hour by hour. Ten minutes to check, scan and file a form several times per day quickly adds up. Your Front of House maestro is distracted from charming your clients; your vibrant instructors are off the floor more; and those beaming smiles that helped build your brand looked forced. The antidote? Improve your systems so that your team’s time is channelled right back into your clientele and the core parts of your business.

Let your staff contribute their gifts.

Career expert Linda Hardenstein, writing in Forbes, explains. "If you’re performing tasks that frustrate you…it’s hard to stay motivated and engaged with your work because you’re being thwarted from contributing your gifts." A Gallup workplace poll relates this to your bottom line. Firms "with highly engaged employees average 21% higher profitability" than those without. Gallup also revealed that engaged workers have lower stress levels, "regardless of hours worked, vacation time or flextime policies." Freeing your staff from admin so they can contribute to more meaningful workplace tasks can seriously up their engagement. Happily, this also ups their productivity and your profits.

Paperless drives profits.

Audit your office to see what repetitive tasks you can remove. Digitizing your docs and going paperless is a great starting point. If a form or waiver can be signed and saved online instantly or even before a class, why is a clipboard and pen still holding up your instructor? When you take paperless seriously, tangible and unexpected improvements appear. As storage needs decrease, you can launch a second treatment room, or expand your health bar. If a staff member is secretly tech-savvy and wants to help, let them contribute this gift, as Hardenstein says. Owning the transition from traditional to paperless will bring meaning to their work, increasing their productivity and loyalty. When staff have more meaningful tasks to do, they’re instantly more engaged. Why would they leave the job when things are just starting to get exciting?

Environmental kudos aside, the decision to go paperless itself is only half of the wow. The other half becomes visible once the repetition has been removed from your workforce. Your staff will have time to devote to the more interesting elements of their job. They’ll do more meaningful work more often which will increase their engagement and naturally inspire them to work harder than ever for you, increasing your profits. In the trade, this is called a win-win situation.