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The old saying goes “if you find a job you love, you’ll never work again”. But even if you land the perfect role, the day-to-day reality doesn’t often match up to the dream.
The same goes for the world of education - where even the most inspiring teachers, tutors and lecturers may fail to get their ideas off the starting blocks.
It all comes down to those familiar friends who seem to follow you from job to job: inefficient practices, tight budgets and poor productivity. They’re going to try their best to bring the fresh-faced ambitions you were hired for crashing down to earth.
So, with these all-too familiar hurdles in mind, how do you get the best from your role, boss your small business?
In this guide, we’ll talk through some common pain points that are holding people back in workplaces, universities and schools across the UK - and how Adobe’s free online tools can help you work smarter, not harder, to overcome them.
In 2023, the Chartered Institute for Professional Development (CIPD) Good Work Index shed light on the current state of work in the UK.
It found that while most people enjoy their work and find it satisfying, between six to nine million workers experience “poor quality work” in some aspects of their job.
What’s more, job quality hasn’t improved since 2019.
This has led people to work on a more transactional basis - i.e., simply for the money.
Damningly, the CIPD have said the UK is in “a slow slide towards mediocrity”. Meanwhile, according to the Trades Union Congress, average real pay is still down 2.7% since 2008 - adding fuel to the belief that work in the UK is no longer truly paying off.
It might seem like being your own boss is the answer. But going into 2024, the life of a small business owner or sole trader doesn’t look too great either.
In 2023, 41% of businesses surveyed by the Office for National Statistics reported r ising prices in goods and services. According to the Bank of England, high inflation is set to drag on until 2025. The war in Ukraine continues to drive up energy costs and the impact of Covid-19 casts a long and persistent shadow over the economy.
In short, whether you’re an employee or a business owner, times are tough. But with some smart working practices and a digital-first mindset, you might be able to s ave yourself time and money, while increasing satisfaction and productivity too.
In 2023, we’ve moved on from the ‘new normal’ of fully remote working we saw from the Covid-19 lockdown onwards. Offices have long since reopened across the public and private sector.
But as many as 44% of UK workers are still at home for at least part of the week. Across the pond, it’s a similar story: 59% of US workers who can work from home do so regularly. It appears that the age of flexible, hybrid working is here to stay.
Throughout 2023, the headlines reflected this shift. The banking giant HSBC announced it was moving out of its 45-story Canary Wharf HQ into “smaller, greener, more flexible” and “more convenient” offices in the City of London. The law firm Clifford Chance is following suit.
You hear the expression “culture shift” often - but the pandemic provided exactly that. It’s changed more than the 9-5 morning commute, lunch hour rush and post-work happy hour cycle that pumped so much money into city centres. It’s also altered the way we interact with our colleagues and approach our everyday tasks.
According to a briefing from the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, some of the new challenges thrown up by flexible working include “difficulties in collaborating with others on work and staff feeling more disconnected from their work organisations”.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that employers are increasingly looking for staff able to work flexibly and collaborate effectively. In fact, collaborative skills are now considered ‘premium’ for the future by 63% of employers, according to a study by PwC - coming just behind flexibility and critical thinking skills in terms of their importance.
One key hurdle in hybrid working is having your team spread out, often using different software, devices or even following different working patterns. The same goes for teachers and educators who might teach their students remotely.
The key is to get everyone on the same page.
With Adobe’s free online tools, anyone can create, edit, upload, save and convert their files using an everyday web browser. It makes collaboration a lot easier, no matter the file type or document. Drag your files into our converter to change them to or from PDF. You can merge, crop, split and edit too. Then, collect comments, track progress and work together in real-time - just like you’re in person.
Paperless offices are better for environment and better for collaboration too. With a cloud-based system, your employees can work anywhere in the world, whenever they like - dipping in and out of files, tracking changes or collaborating in real time. Cloud systems are also far more accessible. By ditching the filing cabinets, hard drives and email attachments, users can access files of any size, anywhere.
If you’re not already using Microsoft Teams or Slack, then you’re missing out. They connect your team across the world with instant messaging, video conferencing and calls. The jury’s out as to which of these two big-hitters is the best. While Teams is now the more popular of the two and integrates with Microsoft’s market-dominant Office suite, Slack is still favoured in dynamic, tech-savvy industries.
to help strengthen your team relationships and boost your collaboration skills.
Whether at home or the office, it’s easy to get bogged down in time-consuming, laborious and unfulfilling tasks. You know the stuff we mean - searching for files, filling in forms, awaiting signatures and processing invoices. Some of this is necessary or even important. But it’s not always how we want to spend our time.
According to Adobe Future of Time research:
In short, workers and business owners alike are looking for ways to get their time back - whether to work on tasks they care about, pursue personal growth or focus on growing their businesses. And according to the CIPD, there’s growing evidence to suggest a link between better job quality and productivity too.
It can take a bit of groundwork to boost your productivity. But if you take it one step at a time, you could save quite a few hours.
As the inventor of the PDF, we know the value of a digital-first workflow. Here are a few tips.
You probably already have some form of digital filing system for Word documents and Excel spreadsheets - and it’s super important to keep this logical and orderly. But what about physical documents with signatures and hand-written notes?
With Adobe Scan, you can quickly upload these to your digital system, so you have everything in one place. From there, it’s super easy to sign, annotate, and send documents on. And with Adobe Sign, you and your customers can sign digital forms in a single click. You can also add customised web forms, branding and PayPal links to your documents in a flash too.
As with any big change, the first thing to do is plan. Start by categorising your tasks in critical, medium and low importance. From there, you can define the tasks that could benefit from automation and which need human care and attention to detail. For example, you may be better off using a chatbot or AI tool to answer some customer queries. You can also automate invoice generation, email marketing and ecommerce.
We all lose track of tasks sometimes - so it helps to have everything laid out in black and white. We’re not talking about a notice board here. With work management platforms like Trello, Wrike and Asana, you can create, assign, manage and tick off tasks from a single touchpoint. It’s a great way to stay on top of busy workloads - both for yourself and in a team.
For businesses of any size and any industry, cybercrime is a constant threat. Case in point: UK businesses have experienced around 2.4 million cybercrimes in 2023 alone, according to the UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey. Charities are also under threat - having experienced 785,000 cybercrimes in the same period.
Aside from the obvious dangers of security breaches to your business, they also cost an average of £1,100 to resolve. For larger businesses, this can rise to almost £5,000.
Solid security practices are therefore essential - and even small changes can make a difference.
When it comes to handling customer or student data, signatures and financial details, it pays to put security first. That’s why we’ve put security at the heart of our Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Sign software.
Here are a few ways you can secure your files and stay safe against cybercrime:
Our password protect feature on PDF helps keep sensitive information restricted to the relevant parties. Simply drag your PDF into our online tool to get started with password protect. From there, you can set a password (we’ll let you know if it’s strong or weak) and then only authorised people can access the file, which protects sensitive information and private data.
You’ll find similar security with e-signatures. Adobe Sign digital signatures are 8 billion and rising - you can be sure that every transaction is legally binding and secure. It’s perfect for contracts, sales forms, invoices and application forms.
The UK Government advises a range of cyber hygiene measures to help guard against common cyberattacks. These include updated malware protection, restricted admin rights, regular cloud backups and network firewalls. These should have your back against the less sophisticated attempts.
Patch management software update policies are also important. It’s a good idea to install updates every 14 days.
The perfect storm of stubborn inflation, high energy costs and low consumer confidence has made for a particularly difficult few years for businesses.
Last year, research from PayPal showed just how worried businesses are:
One year later, things don’t look much better.
62% of SMEs said that ‘survival’ was their main goal for the last six months of 2023.
The stats make for sobering reading. But if you think smart about budgeting and cutting costs, you may be able to keep your head above water.
In 2021, the service management software provider mpro5 conducted research17 into the true costs of paper - with eye-watering results for office managers and business owners across the UK.
It noted that UK SMEs can spend up to £33,000 a year on paper and printing, including storage, printer ink, toner, repairs and maintenance.
Meanwhile, in our article on the benefits of a paperless office, we shone a light on the environmental impact:
The average UK worker churns through 10,000 sheets every year - with three quarters ending up in the wastepaper bin.
It takes five litres of water to make a single sheet of A4 - so even a business of 10 employees would burn through half a million litres in their paper usage.
200 million trees are cut down each day to make paper - one every 2.5 seconds.
So, how do you reduce the environmental and financial impact of paper in your workplace?
Here are a few tips:
Simply sending documents via email rather than in the post is a great way to reduce your costs. And when it comes to signatures, don’t sweat it. You can request, sign and upload your signed documents in a flash with our free Request Signature tool.
Just drag and drop your PDF or other file into the online tool, add recipients, set a signature mark and hit send. You can even track progress and set reminders. It saves you losing time and money by overnighting documents. And as it uses Adobe Sign technology, it’s totally secure too.
You might not be able to go paperless straight away - but you can take it one step at a time. Start by reviewing your equipment and printing costs and look to find ways to reduce them. For example, you might be able to switch to a single printer.
Cloud storage cuts out the filing cabinets to make paper-free storage space. And remember - it’s not just about creating and saving Word documents in a digital folder. You can easily digitise hand-written documents using Adobe Scan. It’s free, easy and a great option for teachers and students, too.
Adobe Acrobat online is here to help you to create a more efficient, secure, cost-effective and sustainable office, school or university. To wrap up, here are a few take-home tricks for your PDF powerhouse.
Get ready to chop, change and make perfect PDFs -
with no subscriptions or software in sight.
