A successful company strives to keep employees as productive as possible, and a knowledgeable business knows that happy people are more productive. Happiness at work can increase productivity by as much as 12% in fact, according to a study at University of Warwick*. A story in CMS Wire quotes Paul Murphy, national sales director of Spire Investment Partners, who said technology such as an electronic document management system can make work easier and people happier.
“If employees are more efficient, they’re happier. If they’re happier, they’re more productive. If they’re more productive, you’re more profitable,” Murphy told the news source, which added that enterprise content management systems can make life easier for employees by cutting down on time needed to search through file cabinets, improve communication and collaboration with co-workers and automate repetitive tasks.
CMS Wire said that internal customers, or employees, matter the most in the quality and quantity of work output. According to the source, a satisfied employee is more creative, productive and dependable, which generates work that can make customers happy and encourage them to stay loyal to a brand or company.
Even though in the long run it can make people happy, Ed Yonker, CIO of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, warned that people get agitated when new changes come down at a company. It is important to reduce the level of frustration and dissatisfaction in the early stages to cultivate happiness with the new system. Gaston County, North Carolina helped quell the impatience of the integration with education and proper training, CMS Wire said.
“Although the resistance to change has been far less than for ECM than other applications or new business processes, there are always people who want to continue doing things the way they’ve always been done,” says Brandon Jackson, CIO of Gaston County. “However, the more we publicized the success of the departments that were our early ECM adopters, the more people began to realize how tedious working with paper actually is.”
Rochelle Waldoch, compliance and records manager of Ramsey County, Minnesota, told CMS Wire that they started watching training videos that featured characters from The Flintstones. She said just because something is technical doesn’t mean employees can’t have fun with it. The source also stated that the most effective change to a content management system brings a sense of togetherness for something everyone has in common, which in this case is becoming educated on a new form of technology.
On Inside Counsel, a website designed for law department leaders, Dennis Kiker, a partner at LeClairRyan in Richmond, Virginia, said that understanding and acceptance of a new program should come through training on the document management program. He said this also lets workers know that the new program is a priority for the company. Too many implementations fail because of a lack of acceptance and poor planning.
“Employees should be trained when they are hired, whenever the program is significantly updated and on a periodic basis thereafter,” Kiker said. “If possible, the training should be interactive and include a testing component to increase the likelihood that information will be retained.”
The direct benefits of a content management system, such as reduced paper costs and increased efficiency, are often clear improvements in obtaining a new system. Yet the indirect cause of employee happiness, and the increased productivity as a result of it, is another measurable impact that such a solution can have on an organization. With proper training and a simple transition, the company and employees stand to gain many advantages.
* http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/eri/bulletin/2009-10-3/ops/
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