Congratulations on your first week of 2021. We are out of the mire of 2020, but economic endeavors don’t always end when the fiscal year does. Luckily, there is hope in sight, so it will pay to continue pressing on and doing our best until we’re out of the woods. What better way to carry on than to set goals for yourself and your organization. Not just any goals either, but New Year’s Resolutions for 2021! Most of you already have one you’re chasing. Perhaps you’re a few chapters into your goal of reading one book a month. Or maybe you’ve proudly cut soda from the lunch menu. You can also set resolutions that track with your organization’s long term plans. Not every corporate strategy or financial benchmark is easily translatable to the famous annual custom, though. So, you’re probably wracking your brain how to turn serious company policy into a fun exercise in motivation. The second step is figuring out how your business can keep your New Year’s Resolutions for 2021.

Staying healthy isn’t just a 2020 thing

Your health affects the rest of your office. Yes, you can get people sick once you all are actually at the office, but you can also put stress on the rest of your team when your physical health keeps you from your work or offline too often. Sometimes, the common cold is just plain unexpected, but you can also take steps to avoid falling victim to regular illness or the pandemic. Even in 2021, we can continue to follow local and federal guidelines and listen to recommendations from the WHO. Minimize social contact. Wash your hands. Wear a mask. Get your seasonal flu shot. You can also consult with your physician about a healthy diet and routine to ensure you’re staying fit and ready for work every day. As a way to spread this attitude around your organization, consider offering Zoom yoga sessions or digital smoothie making lessons with some of your colleagues. Even circulating colorful emails with tasty recipes for fruity breakfasts or meatless Mondays can be enough to spread the fitness bug and keep everyone online during these typically sickly winter months.

From commuting on the highway to the information highway

I don’t know about you, but I’m used to spinning my chair around and just striking up a conversation with my office mate or desk buddy. Need to run something by the boss? Take a stroll to her office and rap for a bit. Even after COVID-19, companies are planning to stay remote permanently or semi-permanently. This can make collaboration hard even for the digital generation. A good New Year’s Resolution would be to increase and encourage open online communication among your teams. One solution is to research messaging software and getting everyone on the same page. Being able to chat with any colleague or employee at any time isn’t quite like being in the same room and office space…but it’s close! Set weekly or monthly meeting times for departments and for department heads. Look into file sharing and workflow software to facilitate remote business processes.

Spring cleaning starts in January with file management

Speaking of software solutions. It has taken the move to remote for a lot of companies to realize that their filing habits are abysmal. Either they’re still using mostly paper documentation, they use digital without an accompanying software, or their file management software is out of date. You might be one of these companies. In the scramble to vacate office buildings and setup camp in home offices, files may have even gotten lost or misplaced. It’s time to reevaluate your solution and your best practices. With the right content management or file management software, your organization will have the capacity to design the folder architecture to fit the way your company runs. You can create workflows that match real daily, monthly, and annual processes. And you can use security features to set access limits on team members and safely share select files with non-users outside of your organization. The right content management solution can also make all the rest of your wintertime spring cleaning even more streamlined that it was last year! So setting next year’s goals will be a cinch!

This is just a small sampling of our recommendations for 2021 New Year’s Resolutions and how to keep them. We’re not experts on the holiday, but we are experts on content management. If you have more questions about our ECM solution or how to get your ducks in a row, files-wise, you can reach us here. We’d love to hear from you! Happy New Year, and good luck keeping your resolutions!