Have Someone You Trust Do Your Copying And Materials Assembly

Posted by Marie on August 1, 2009

One of my projects last week was to reformat and assemble a series of handouts for a training seminar. The person who created them must have not been familiar with Excel because the text ran off the page and the margins were all messed up.

This person also did not use the automatic stapling feature of the copier and ended up hand-stapling everything. As a result, the pages did not line up. The packets looked sloppy, and no one could be sure of the exact quantities.

I cringe when people describe a task as “clerical” in the same tone they would use to say “simple.” It really isn’t that simple to copy and assemble materials. It takes a lot of focus and organization. It also helps when the person on a particular project understands the materials at which he/she is looking.

Businesses often try to hand these types of jobs off to the lower-level workers or the least expensive temps. This approach increases the risk that you’ll enter your meeting, presentation, or seminar with materials that are either wrong, short, or not reflective of your professional image.

Then you’ll need to expend even more resources to do everything over again. This time—correctly.