Who has not heard this question from a new employee or a visitor from a different site?
There are usually two approaches for printing:
- First, the traditional, and a bit old-fashioned approach, states that if the printer is close to the employees, they do not have to go anywhere to get their paper printout, they save time, therefore the company saves money.
Second, more common approach, is to have one high quality printer/copier per location floor, thus reducing your costs (maintenance, toner cartridges…). - At Penon Partners, we have supported the one-floor-printer approach and for these five distinct reasons… you might be surprised by some of them!
- Costs
Switching to a single, powerful shared printer per floor should save you money:
- Your IT team will save time because there will not be multiple printers to maintain,
- Ink is expensive, especially for small printers, and no economy of scale is possible (you often find after a while that your printer fleet is full of different makes and models),
- People tend to print much less if they must walk across the office to get their paper printout.
(I will not go into details here, but contact Penon Partners if you need an individualized diagnosis for your company)
- Environment
Imagine you have a one-floor-printer company policy: you do not have to regularly service and replace all those personal printers, you can organize a recycle process for toner cartridges (since you only have one type to manage), and because of less printing, you will use less paper, which is good for the environment. (Congratulations!)
- Internal Communication
The power of informal communication is often underestimated. In these times of remote work, we might feel that we would save time by knowing the people we work with. The one-floor printer has the same power as the coffee machine and water cooler. You just stop there, along with Greta from marketing and chat for a bit, so the next time you need to communicate with all your vendors about your new purchasing process, you will be glad to know someone from marketing that can help you send a blast email. This could also eliminate that expensive annual team building event.
- Security
Many floor printer models made today come with a “secure print” capability. This feature will ensure confidential or sensitive documents do not get printed and left in an output tray vulnerable for viewing by someone else. A secure print job is held inside the device until you arrive to release it by entering a PIN number or swiping your security badge when you are at the printer. This is useful for documents that you don’t want others to see, or for large documents that you don’t want to hog the printer until you can arrive to babysit.
You should be doing this if you are printing anything that is personally identifiable information because this will help ensure you are compliant with many security programs like PCI audits, HIPAA and GDPR.
In addition, secure printing can save you money because it only prints where you are. If you accidentally print something, then it will never print. If you accidentally send print to the wrong printer, it will never print.
- Health
Are we still talking about printers? Yes, we are. Let me ask you some questions: Do you really think that employees glued to their desk chair for 8 hours are more productive? How many of you have a connected watch app that tells them every hour to get up from their desk and walk around a bit? How many companies contribute to the gym fees for employees as an incentive? Employees are human beings: they need to move, talk, look away from their computer. Everybody will agree that taking care of our employees has significant benefits for motivation, productivity, absenteeism, and that provides long-term savings for a company. Let’s keep things simple: let them walk, move, and talk at the office! If the one-floor printer is not THE ONLY solution, it is surely part of your plan to keep your employees healthy!
So, have I convinced you? What is your personal experience with Corporate Print policies?
Let’s connect and make sure you follow Penon Partners to get our next articles in the series: “Saving money on printing,” and “The paperless Office.”
Written by Carole Devies – Finance Transformation Practice Leader at Penon Partners
Connect with Carole – https://calendly.com/cdevies
Email Carole at cdevies@penonpartners.com