Are Your Employees Too Printer-Happy? Here’s What You Can Do About It

While your employees are probably top-notch, when it comes to printing documents, many may treat the practice like they’re playing with the house’s money (which they are). It’s been estimated that the average U.S. office worker prints out approximately 34 pages every day, and that nearly two-thirds of printed office documents are unused — either due to printer error or overall user carelessness — and are discarded on the day that they are printed.

Wasteful printing can have a significant effect on overhead costs. The expenses related to printing can equal as much as 3 percent of your business’s yearly revenue, so imagine how much money you’d save just by minimizing or even eliminating wasteful printing!

Why Employees Are Such Careless Printers

Your workforce might have adopted careless printing practices because they aren’t expected to bear the brunt of the costs, or because they don’t have the right tools and resources to allow them to print efficiently. Not only does this waste money, but it might also undermine your office’s information security if partially printed sensitive documents are simply being discarded. Your team must have an awareness of the costs of printing documents, the right equipment, and the supervision necessary to ensure lean printing practices.

Here are a few steps you can take to save money on your printing expenses and reduce wasteful printing.

Adopt printer management software.

Printer management software is an excellent tool for monitoring your printer output. It empowers you with the knowledge you need to optimize your office expenses and gives you the printing costs of individual projects. The information you glean from print management software reporting can help you conduct effective routine audits of your document printing.

Make sure your printers default to black-and-white after each print task.

Color printing is extraordinarily expensive – approximately three times higher than black-and-white per page. If you occasionally print out color-saturated graphs, make sure your printer doesn’t have to be manually transitioned back to black-and-white, because you could be needlessly using your color ink to print out standard work documents before anyone notices!

Adopt secure release printing solutions.

Secure release printing is a feature that requires authentication before printing is initiated. This prevents the printing of sensitive materials that could be left unsecured in the printer tray. Moreover, this ensures that all of the printing tasks are necessary and that all printing materials are collected quickly.

Upgrade your printer/copier equipment.

Your office equipment might not be up to the task of managing your document printing needs. While purchasing a new printer/copier system might seem like a heavy short-term expense, the money you save on not only long-term maintenance but also printer inefficiencies could yield long-term benefits. One high-performing multifunction office printer could do a more effective job than a multitude of individual desk printers, particularly if they have to be individually serviced.

Visual Edge IT connects organizations of all sizes to the best office equipment solutions for their operations, industry, and budgets, offering office printers, scanners, VOIP phone systems, and much more for lease and purchase. for more details about our products and services, please visit our information page.