Business Info - issue 139

magazine 09 P2P Magazine | 25 Documents PAPER-LITE, NOT PAPERLESS Small businesses are struggling to reduce print volumes, according to a new report from Brother UK that calls into question received wisdom about paper use in offices. Paper-lite: busting the myth of the paperless office reveals that while 61% of managers in small businesses are striving to reduce paper consumption, 41% of workers say their business now prints more than it did two years ago. Almost two thirds (63%) of managers say they couldn’t function without paper and 71% of employees believe that printing documents increases their efficiency. While people still like to work with paper, they recognise that there are better ways to store and distribute information. Two thirds of employees believe that scanning documents enables a more efficient way of working (64%) and helps improve the quality of their work (65%). Benefits include a reduction in clutter (44%) and easier collaboration (40%), editing (38%) and proofing/checking (37%). Packaging CALLING TIME ON SUP Commercial, the office supplies company renowned for its sustainable business practices, is replacing the plastic wrappers used to send out catalogues with recyclable cardboard packaging. Doing so will remove 4kg of single use plastic (SUP) from Commercial’s supply chain, the equivalent of 5,000 breakfast bar wrappers or 262 metres of shrink-wrap. www.commercial.co.uk Green IT IT POLLUTION RISK HIGHLIGHTED IN NEWVIDEO TCO Development has produced a new campaign video, This is IT , highlighting the impact that IT has on climate change and pollution and making the case for a circular approach to IT products. According to UN andWorld Economic Forum studies, the current yearly global volume of electronic waste is around 50 million tons, only 20% of which is recycled. This contributes to an annual loss of natural resources with a value of 55 billion euros. The new TCO Certified, generation 8 sustainability certification for IT products seeks to address these shortcomings by requiring products to be durable, repairable and upgradeable, so that they last longer and can be reused. Materials must also be recyclable and suitable for use in the manufacture of new products instead of being incinerated, placed in landfill or exported to developing countries. The video can be seen at tcocertified. com/this-is-it and on Facebook and Linkedin. BULLETIN IT support THE 10 FUNNIEST SUPPORT CALLS IT support provider Probrand has published a selection of the funniest (i.e. most embarrassing) support calls it received last year. These include: 1 A user who had punched his laptop and wanted the screen replaced before his colleagues found out. 2 One frantic caller who got in touch to advise that their laptop was unusable and full of viruses – It turns out they’d been using their work laptop to watch X-rated videos at home. 3 An embarrassed user who needed help unlinking their company iCloud from their work phone, as ‘personal’ photographs got mixed in with work files. 4 A major business client that called to report they’d lost their internet connection. It turned out the internet was down because an employee in the business’s finance team had cancelled their BT line to save £20 a month. It took almost two weeks for the business to get back online, costing thousands of pounds in lost revenue. 5 After an entire corporate network had gone down several times, Probrand engineers found that someone had cut through the main power lead supporting the servers and repaired it with gaffer tape and a part designed for domestic use. To see the whole Top 10, visit www.probrand.co.uk Past their sell-by date The Top 10 workplace traditions you would like to die out n 9-5 working hours (53%) n Long meetings (34.6%) n Professional dress codes (30.6%) n Having to work in the office every day (29.7%) n Being made to call in when you’re sick, instead of texting or emailing (20%) n Set lunch hours (17.8%) n Annual performance reviews (16.8%) n Set workspaces (15.9%) n Signing birthday cards for colleagues (9.5%) n Tea rounds (7.7%) (Findings from a survey of 1,200 UK professionals by independent jobs board CV-Library. www.cv-library.co.uk ) Internet KEEPING PIRATES AT BAY LGfL DigiSafe, the safeguarding arm of internet service provider LGfL, has become the first educational technology company and ISP to work with City of London Police to block all websites on the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s (PIPCU) InfringingWebsite List (IWL). IWL documents known piracy sites, which will now be blocked to LGfL’s UK community of two million students and 3,000 schools. This will prevent access to inappropriate material and reduce the risk of legal repercussions due to pirated material being accessed from a school site. onlinesafety.lgfl.net 01732 759725