Do you look like any of these printing personalities?
There are many types of printing personalities, and today I’d like to talk about just a few of them.
We all know that reducing your printing is good for the environment and great for the bottom line; it’s something we’ve talked about on here many times before (for example, in the Think Before You Print article). We’ve also talked a lot about the range of solutions available to help better manage print levels, paper consumption etc.
What we haven’t talked about in any huge detail (but what’s certainly important) is human behaviour. If your employees aren’t on board in terms of printing less then solutions and printing audits will only take you so far. To really make a difference, employees need to buy-in to a printing reduction strategy.
Today I thought I’d have a bit of fun by having a go at identifying some personality types when it comes to office printing. Do you recognise yourself or any of your colleagues? I bet you do 
The Print-all – Perhaps the most wasteful of all office staff members who prints, the ‘Print all’ prints anything and everything. Whether it’s emails, large detailed reports or agendas for meetings, if it’s not printed for review the ‘Print all’ can’t relax. In fact, the ‘Print all’ will often print so much that they forget what they sent to print, leaving office printers overflowing with uncollected documents at the end of each day.
The Lazy printer – This staff member – the lazy printer – doesn’t necessarily print more than anyone else in the office, but when they do, expect multiple copies to hit the printer. That’s because rather than previewing documents before hitting “print”, the ‘Lazy printer’ prefers instead to print them than to check formatting. This trial and error approach can often result in reams of paper being wasted until the desired result is achieved. What’s more, the lazy printer will often print single-sided and sometimes straight to colour simply because they haven’t changed their default print settings.
The Print Wrecker – Again, the ‘Print wrecker’ isn’t necessarily a heavy printer but for some reason they always seem to be the one using the printer when it malfunctions. While it’s difficult to determine what, if anything, the ‘Print wrecker’ does to cause such disruption when printer problems arise, they’re often hovering nervously nearby.
The Eco printer – The most frugal printer of them all, the ‘Eco-printer’ only prints what’s absolutely necessary. When they do print expect the document to be double-sided, black and white and full with text. For the ‘Eco-printer’, white space is wasted space. More often than not, the ‘Eco-printer’ will be vocal in encouraging others to print less too. Unfortunately for most organisations, ‘Eco-printers’ are few and far between and as such their efforts are frequently met with resistance.
So – do any of these make you think of yourself, colleagues or members of staff?
Want to read more about printing less? See more in this print less category
Did you recognise yourself in any of these printing personalities?
Actually, I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve seen myself as each one of those printing personalities at one time or another; scary thought.
You’d probably think that choosing a printer is a simple task and not one worth spending a huge amount of time on. But when you think about how much a printer is used within your business and how reliant your employees are on printing documents, invoices, and so on, you might want to think twice before making a snap-decision.