You’re Too Busy to Keep Using Paper

It’s amazing how something seemingly small and insignificant in the short term can become surprisingly significant when viewed over a longer time period. For example, if you buy a cup of coffee twice a day at Starbucks for $2.10, that doesn’t feel like a very big deal. But, amazingly, in just a month you’ve spent $126 and, in a year, $1,533!

The same is true with safety paperwork. While spending one or two minutes to handle a single piece of paper may seem trivial at the time, the amount of wasted time handling paper becomes significantly more alarming when you evaluate it over a year.

Let’s start with a conservative estimate and say that on average you waste one minute of time for every piece of paper you handle.

1 Box of Paper (5000 sheets) – 83 hours
5 Boxes of Paper (5000 sheets) – 416 hours

The reality is, most companies spend more than one minute handling one piece of paper. For example, take a company doing a Daily Hazard Assessment on a job site. When you factor in printing, photocopying, dropping forms off on site, collecting forms, and filing them, a company can easily waste over 40 hours filling out one Daily Hazard Assessment form on one job site.

How To Waste 40+ Hours – on ONE Paper Form

Create Form in Word Editor
- 30 minutes per year
Print/Photocopy enough copies for 1 year
- 10 – 15 minutes per year
Drop off printed forms at job site
- 60 minutes per year
Carry form back to site trailer after completing inspection and temporarily store/file it
- 5 minutes per form
- 20 hours per year (250 days)
Bring form back to Head Office
- 1 60-minute trip per month
- 12 hours per year
File forms at Head Office
- 1 minute per form
- 3 hours per year (250 days)
Find form after it’s been filed
- average 30 minutes per month
- 6 hours per year