Poor document management leads to employee resentment, says M-Files study

According to new research from M-Files, poor document management systems are fuelling employee resentment, thus affecting productivity and increasing the risk of data breaches. The study shows that a third of office workers are frustrated when searching for information, which is driving many of them to go over the IT department’s heads and use their own file-sharing apps.

M-Files questioned 350 office workers about their information-sharing habits and found there was a great deal of room for improvement in the way organisations manage their information. 31% of respondents find looking for documents in their company’s IT systems difficult, while 42% say it can take as long as 15 minutes to locate a single document.

His has led to 40% of employees using their own file-sharing solutions beyond the IT team’s knowledge and control, creating increased risk. Julian Cook, VP of global sales at M-Files, says these frustrations are understandable since many existing document management solutions remain flawed.

“As our evidence shows, historic approaches to document management are damaged, and the longer businesses refuse to address mainstay issues surrounding the searching and storing of information, employees will continue to experience frustrations, which will directly impact their productivity.

“The challenge is that information is typically locked up in rigid, one-size-fits-all systems or it chaotically proliferates across multiple disconnected systems. Because of this companies are really struggling to manage documents and other information stored across these information silos. This means employees can’t do their jobs effectively, which, in turn, is escalating their frustrations.

He added: “It might sound trivial, but if an employee spends 15 minutes a day searching for a document, which the data suggests many are doing, that would be the equivalent of more than a week’s worth of work time every year. Understandably, this is leading to resentment amongst staff when using their employers’ document management systems.

“The document management market is heating up, and is expecting to double by 2023, according to recent research. But critically, when considering new solutions, organisations must consider the needs of employees. Where information is stored shouldn’t really matter. It just needs to be easy to find, manage, and secure, but it surprising how many document management solutions can’t manage that. These solutions need to be flexible enough to wrap around the way that employees want to work, rather than impose a structure that gets in the way of what should be a fluid and seamless experience.”