Complete guide to Office Document Organization
Needless to say, office document organization is necessary in the workplace. It makes you effective and is required to run your day-to-day operations. Office paperwork organization involves a systematic approach such that anyone at your office or team can easily retrieve any document. Organizing office documents also reduces clutter, and saves you time. Depending on the size of your office, the kind of work, and regulatory body regulation, the amount and types of documents you need to organize will vary. However, the approach to organizing the document shared in the post will still be applicable. In this post, I have tried to simplify the office document organization system and you can apply this to your small business, and home office too.
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Why you need Office Document Organization System
Here are a few reasons you must organize your documents at work
- It will make you work more effectively
- Reduce clutter
- Reduce overwhelm from scattered papers
- Easy retrieval of paper in need
- Smooth functioning of work
- Better teamwork and less friction among the team
My Office Document Organization Experience
I work at a laboratory as a Quality Manager so I handle paperwork not just for my department but have to create a document management system for the entire organization as per ISO 9000. My experience of handling so many documents both in physical and digital format has given me a good understanding of document organization. Office Document Organization is not only applicable to the routine use paperwork but also to processes, accounting, invoicing, legal documents, archived data, and employee data. You may not need to consider all these if you are going to implement paperwork organization only for your department. But if you are an entrepreneur or self-employed you may need to review all the aspects to identify documents you need to organize.
How to Organize Papers at Work
Here are things that you need to consider when organizing documents at work and the organization system you can follow to effectively organize your paperwork. Based on your work all the organizations mentioned may not be applicable. You can select those that are relevant to you.
List all the documents
To start organizing documents make a list of all the documents that you need to organize this will give you a good view of every document you need to organize. Instead of physically sorting the documents you can classify them on paper first. This will make the categorization of documents easy as you will be able to visualize them well on paper and not get overwhelmed by the heap of files and papers.
Establish document organization structure
Start by defining a structure for your document system. By creating a clear and organized framework for documents the organization process will be quick and consistent. You can also define a clear document hierarchy to categorize complex documents. The most popular way is to have a 3-tier document system wherein the top level is for company policies, and the second level is for procedures and processes. The third tier is for records.
Another approach to establishing a document organization structure is to organize them based on the department it is related to or the purposes of the document. For example, organizing documents as finance documents, customer support documents, inventory documents, etc. Based on the process at your workplace and the number of departments the organizational structure can be defined.
If you are looking just to organize the documents for your department the best way to do it would be the activities that you or your department handles. For example, if you are working for the HR department the various activities can be recruitment, onboarding new employees, salary processing, organizing events, etc. In this case, your document organization can be a file for recruitment that will have CV/resume, selection process documents, open positions, etc. Then 1 folder each for new employee’s documents relevant to joining, A file for all the salary processing documents, and 1 file for each event that includes all the papers for the event such a budget, plan, etc.
Ultimately, a well-structured document organization system streamlines the process of document organization and helps you be consistent.
Categorize documents by types
Within each category of document organization structure, you can further organize documents based on their type. Each department would have various types of documents these can be procedures, data, reports, invoices, quotations, feedbacks, reference guidelines, etc. You can further categorize the documents within the department based on these types.
You should go for categorizing documents by type only if there are too many documents to handle under each category.
Make a Document Organization Chart
Once you have clarity on the structure of document organization and the categories in which you wish to organize the document it will be best to make it into a chart that can be a hierarchy chart and a matrix chart.
Remember I mentioned making a list of documents? You can use that list to make a draft version of the document organization chart. You can mark all documents that will fall in one category with a unique symbol. If you wish to color code the documents you can do the same on the list by highlighting the name of the documents with different colors. Similarly, you can write a number next to each document name that will denote its hierarchy in the document organization structure.
Once you have completed the physical organization you can tweak the chart based on any changes you made during the organization of the files and make the final version of the chart. You can print the document organization chart and display it at the office for easy reference for everybody.
Sorting and categorizing paper documents
Now that you are clear on which document will go where it is time to start organization. This is the most time-consuming activity and yes tedious too. But once done, it will reward you with efficiency.
Before proceeding with this you should gather your supplies. The first step in this process is to carefully sort the papers based on their content, relevance, or urgency. Then organize them into distinct categories. Now add them to their respective files or folders, you can do this alphabetically, chronologically, or by subject matter, establishing a logical order is crucial for efficient document management.
Identify frequent use and archivable documents
The next step would be to organize the files and folder in a way that will help to easily retrieve them and be consistent with filing the documents. To do this effectively you need to know the files that are regularly used and the files that have archived data or will be less frequent in use.
When assembling the files and folders into cabinets ensure that the less frequently used are placed at the bottom of the cabinets or at higher level shelves that are difficult to access so that easily accessible space is available for files that are routinely used.
To stay organized and to make others follow the organization system you have created it is essential that there is ease in accessing the routine use files and paperwork. Otherwise, people will be tempted to not follow the process.
P.S. To get work under control and stay organized at work. I use the below work planner.
Establish a colour-coding
Color coding for documents is a highly effective method to improve organization and maintain the same. By assigning different colors to different categories or subjects, individuals can easily and quickly identify and locate specific files or information within a large collection of documents. For instance by color coding based on the activity or criticality of a document one can easily differentiate between different documents, enabling users to have a clear overview of the documents at a glance. Overall, color coding offers a visually appealing and intuitive approach to document organization, that saves time, reduces stress, and enhances overall productivity.
Define Document labeling
Document labeling is a critical aspect of document organization to systematically classify files and documents. By assigning specific labels or tags to each document, one can quickly identify and locate essential information when needed. These labels often include relevant keywords, date of creation, author name, document type, or any other relevant data that helps in better organizing and retrieving documents.
If you plan to have a numbering system to label it is best to have a unified numbering way that can be used to sequentially label the document in the future too. When implemented effectively, document labeling enhances efficiency, saves time, ensures seamless accessibility to information, and improves overall workflow management.
Make a Masterlist
To effectively identify and have a complete track of all the documents available. It is necessary to have a master list of documents. You can maintain a detailed master list of all the documents if it is required for your work. But for most purposes, it will be sufficient to make a list of files with a unique labeling system, this will be the master list for reference. You can hang this list near the document storage cabinets for quick reference making it easy for other team members to access the documents.
P.S. You can also make masterlist of the most common and frequent work to be more organized and productive at work, refer 12 Master Lists you must make to be organized at work to find more details.
Organize personal documents at work
Apart from the work documents, there are some personal documents related to work that you must ensure to keep organized. These can be your notes, task lists, reference document prints, minutes of meetings, work travel expense receipts, etc. All these documents are related to work but specifically belong to you.
These can be all over the place making you unorganized and putting you at risk of losing them. I highly recommend using a personal folder where you can keep all these documents segregated and organized for easy reference. I recommend this folder from Amazon. You can make 1 folder for each type of document, keep your notebook, diary, and stationery well organized in this folder and easily carry around too. If you are someone who travels for work or visits customers frequently you must definitely use it. Also, if you have a small cubicle you can use this to keep your desk clutter-free.
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Conclusion
Office document organization is key to maintaining a productive and efficient work environment. By establishing a systematic approach, you can easily locate important files, allow better team collaboration, and save your valuable time. The system for document organization shared in this post will help you create a sustainable office document organization system.
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