Case Study: Waterloo Region District School Board

Streamlining record keeping for efficiency and sustainability.

About Waterloo Region District School Board

The Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) is one of the largest school boards in Ontario, educating approximately 62,000 students across 123 locations. It is committed to developing young minds into the leaders of tomorrow, and strives to provide an enriching experience for the students, employees and community it serves.

“We are already seeing paper and copier cost savings, and as we move forward and continue to implement this through more of HR and other departments, we should see even greater paper savings across the board.”
Lorie Hough
FOI, Privacy & Records Information Management Officer
WRDSB

Challenge

With over 9,000 employees to oversee, the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB) Human Resources and Payroll departments had so many files, documents and forms that they were nearly splitting at the seams.

Because of the volume of records, the file cabinets were at the periphery of the department, which meant that staff had to leave their workstation every time they wanted to access an employee’s file.

Under the old paper-based method, documents would have to physically travel from the human resources clerk to the authorizing manager to the payroll department and finally to the employee and their supervisor. Copies of the same information were filed in the employee file and the separate payroll file.

Solution

Leveraging Laserfiche technology, Ricoh presented a solution that would streamline form processing, digitize legacy files and empower staff to be more effective in their work.

Ricoh first conducted discovery interviews with key team members to determine the types of documents, forms and records and identify the department’s record keeping needs.

Using the information gathered, Ricoh developed a strategy to import legacy files into the Laserfiche system. Human Resource staff sorted and packed all of the files before shipping them to Toronto for mass scanning by Ricoh’s Legal Document Services.

Scanning stations were also strategically installed throughout the office to eliminate the need for paper filing going forward. The team created a process for documents to be easily scanned into the system at any one of these stations. The digitized files would then be indexed with the necessary data forms, and sorted into a file structure allowing easier retrieval.

Results

Teacher is leading a class of elementary school children

HR at WRDSB regained ownership of valuable office floor space, and employees are being put to better use, as they no longer have to spend time hunting through stacks of files and mailing or couriering documents.

Each document that is processed through Laserfiche now includes an audit trail so that approvals can be monitored and bottlenecks identified. Many formerly tedious tasks have been automated, freeing up staff time and improving overall efficiency in the office.

The WRDSB is also experiencing increased levels of sustainability with the Laserfiche system. The digitization of files has allowed them to reduce dependence on the inter-school courier to deliver documents, reducing emissions and strain on the environment.

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