Filing wastes over £1 million a day
Filing wastes over £1 million a day
Over £1 million a day is wasted by UK businesses looking for lost files, according to the national filing survey from document management and storage solutions specialist Kardex Systems (UK).
With office filing staff earning around £8-£9 an hour, the average cost of locating each lost file is about £10.
According to Nick Tuggey, marketing director at Kardex: "six per cent of the UK's 2.1 million businesses admit to losing at least one file a day –that adds up to 120,000 lost files. By this estimate, poor filing practices are costing UK businesses £1.2 million every working day, or more than £240 million a year."
More than half (55 per cent) of the lost files are simply misfiled. Many (48 per cent) are lying on other people's desks, and around 13 per cent turn up on the boss's desk. But for 2 per cent of lost files, the mystery is never solved because they are never found.
Despite this level of confusion and wastage, two thirds of the companies surveyed said they were not planning to change their filing policy. "Businesses are simply failing to do their sums, says Tuggey. By remaining complacent and relying on outdated four-drawer filing cabinets, they are wasting thousands of pounds a year, and substantially compromising their overall efficiency and profitability."
Among the other figures revealed by the survey are:
Just one third of respondents use any kind of electronic filing systems.
Only 29 per cent work in companies where there are employees dedicated to filing, though this rises to 35 per cent for companies with more that 500 employees, leaving many people to do their own filing.
Just over half have a clearly understood filing/document management policy.
A total of 71 per cent claim that files go missing less than once per week.
A total of 37 per cent anticipate an increase in paper usage.
Over one-quarter of respondents claim that their company is planning to move towards a paperless office, but three-quarters of respondents do not believe a paperless office is achievable.
