Having read an article about how photocopiers easily trigger collaborative interactions in the workplace, I am concerned that a paper-free future will lack this unassuming tool which promotes collaboration.

I used to teach in a small school where the photocopier sat in a small room. It was a huge machine and it jammed constantly. A  jam if you fed too many pages through at once; another  jam if you tried to make too many copies at once, etc etc. But I did love one thing about it: I would meet other teachers there who I wouldn’t otherwise interact with. I could share my frustrations with them; I could have meaningful interactions with them as they showed me how to spot where the problem was; it gave me an excuse to say hello to Rosalind in her office as I asked for help.

“We know that chance encounters and conversations promote cooperation and innovation.”

As a result many companies design “time-out” spaces that will encourage conversations between employees. This is a great way of promoting inter-departmental collaboration (assuming that you have the opportunity to bump into people from other departments or areas in the organisation). It is also a way to enable informal learning to take place in person.

In a Harvard Business Review article brilliantly titled ‘Who Moved My Cube?’ from the July/Aug 2011 issue which focused on collaboration, Anne-Laure Fayard and John Weeks share their research on how different companies have changed their virtual and physical spaces to promote informal interactions at work.  One of the factors that need to be taken into account when designing a space to enable people to have informal (yet private) conversations, is the need for privacy. But privacy does not just mean that you can talk without risking being overheard, you also need to see when other people are about to enter your space, so that you can have control over who can or can’t hear you. Another interesting fact was that a communal space designed for interaction cannot be placed where there is a constant stream of people going through. Not only do you want to control who hears you or talks to you, but you also don’t want to feel like you have to join a conversation when you are just passing through an area.

But what struck me most was the piece on photocopiers, as a perfect place to promote interaction.

The authors of the article observed the interactions that took place in the photocopier room in three French companies.  As they observed people having problems with the machine, they saw others going out of their way to help them solve problems or to teach others how to use the machine or fix a problem. These “photocopier- related” conversations sometimes turned into other work related discussions.

What’s more, through observing what other people were photocopying, staff found out about other people’s work that could affect them – such as when “someone was copying a written report of a project that was relevant to their own work or a new company policy that might affect them.” Indeed, I remember discovering what other teachers were interested in or teaching their students by having a quick peek at what they were photocopying and asking them about it if it seemed interesting. The kind of conversation that could hardly be replaced by approaching them in the staffroom and asking them: ‘So, what are you teaching your students today?’ Having a look at what other people were handing out to their students also gave me some idea of what my own students were being exposed to in other classes as well as providing inspiration for teaching materials I could create myself.

The photocopier needs to be placed somewhere appropriate for these interactions to take place of course. When I used to run a theatre company, I shared an office space with two other companies. At first, we shared a big room and had an open-space type office. The photocopier was located well within the space of one of the companies. As a result, I always felt like I was in someone else’s space when I used the machine. Not that the company weren’t welcoming about this or had a problem with it, but I was very aware that I might be distracting them while I was there.

Three years later, we all moved to an office space where each company had their own room and the photocopier was placed in our shared kitchen space. There, I DO remember stopping and having a chat with people while we were using the machine. We were already in quite a social space and our conversations did not distract anyone.

So, back to the title of this post.  The photocopier comes from a time when paper was the best way to disseminate information. Now that we try to use as little paper as possible, what will replace the photocopier? I’m not sure that a machine with the printer function has the same effect, as some of the material printed might be confidential, while only a small proportion of photocopied material might be for your eyes only.

In addition to that, photocopying is a much longer process (well, ok, that might be a bit of an exaggeration) than printing. When you print a document, you click your mouse at your desk and when you feel like it, you walk to the printer, grab your bits of paper and leave. When you are about to photocopy something, you usually wait for a time when photocopying won’t interrupt your work too much, then you grab your papers, go to the machine, put the docs in, wait and then leave. That means that, generally, you spend more time at the machine than you would if you were just picking up your printed documents, therefore increasing the time during which you are likely to interact with others.

Will our attempt to go paper-free reduce the opportunity for informal collaboration in the workplace?

Or will something else take its place?

Should large organisations where teams run the risk of working in isolation be thinking about a suitable replacement?

Should leaders begin to consider how this might be affecting people at work?

Or maybe the need for social interaction, which was inherent in humans before the photocopier existed, adapt itself to this brave new world?

(This is the first post in a new short series about Promoting collaboration in the workplace.)

Thanks for the images:
quinn.anya
Emma K Lydersen

 Quotes from the HBR  July/Aug 2011 article Who Moved my Cube? by Anne-Laure Fayard and John Weeks.