Walking the Paperwork Around: The Cost of Moving People to Move Information

The tolerated pain

A purchase order needs the financial manager's signature, so a buyer prints it, walks to her office, finds she is in a meeting and comes back later. A workshop supervisor walks to the stores office to check whether a part is in stock, because the stock system cannot be seen from the floor. A branch manager drives forty minutes to head office with a folder of leave forms and expense claims, because the originals must be signed. A site foreman phones the office, waits on hold, then drives back to collect a drawing that could have been sent.

Each trip feels like part of the job. Walking around is even seen as healthy and sociable. But when people move simply to carry information, or to wait beside someone for a decision, the business is paying skilled employees to act as couriers.

This is a different problem from waiting at a desk for a colleague to reply, or from approvals that sit in someone's inbox, which is covered in the cost of approval queues and blocked capacity. Here the cost is physical: the walk, the drive, the wait outside an office door and the work left unattended in the meantime.

Why businesses tolerate it

• Paper is still the official record. Some forms are printed and signed because "that is how audit wants it", even when nobody has checked.
• Information lives in one place. If stock levels, job cards or drawings are only visible in one office, people go to the office.
• Face-to-face feels faster. Walking over seems quicker than sending a message that may not be read.
• The cost is spread out. Ten minutes for one person and an hour's drive for another are never added up.
• Movement looks like activity. Someone walking purposefully with a folder appears busy, so nobody questions it.

An old idea in manufacturing

Factories have treated unnecessary movement as waste for decades. The Lean Enterprise Institute's description of the seven wastes includes motion, which it describes as unnecessary movements such as looking for parts, tools or documents; conveyance, which is moving things unnecessarily; and waiting, where people stand idle because something they need has not arrived. Office and field work suffer from the same three wastes. A form carried between buildings is conveyance. A person walking to find a file is motion. A supervisor waiting outside a door for a signature is waiting.

Operational symptoms

• staff who regularly leave their workstation or site to get a signature or check a record;
• trips between branches or sites to deliver or collect paperwork;
• work stopping on the floor while someone goes to the office to find something out;
• queues outside a manager's office at certain times of day;
• documents lost or delayed between buildings;
• field teams phoning the office repeatedly for information, a pattern described in why field teams still phone the office for information.

How the pain becomes money

• Labour cost of the journey: paid time spent walking, driving and waiting.
• Idle cost of the work left behind: a machine, a crew or a customer waits while the person is away.
• Travel cost: fuel, vehicle wear and, for longer trips, tolls and parking.
• Delay cost: decisions and orders wait for the next trip, slowing jobs and cash flow.
• Risk cost: paper documents in transit can be lost, and people on the road are exposed to accidents.

An illustrative cost model

This example is illustrative. Every figure is an assumption for a hypothetical business. Picture an Eastern Cape building-supplies company with a head office, a yard and two branches, 60 staff in total.

• On-site trips: 25 × 12 minutes = 5 hours a day; 5 × R280 × 230 = R322,000
• Branch trips, time: 4 × 1.5 hours × R350 × 46 = R96,600
• Branch trips, vehicle: 4 × 60 km × R5 × 46 = R55,200
• Illustrative total: about R474,000 a year

The model does not include idle time for people or equipment left waiting, which in a yard or workshop can be the biggest cost. Use your own vehicle rates and trip counts. A simple tally sheet at reception and at each branch for two weeks will give a realistic picture.

When it becomes commercially urgent

• the business is opening another branch or site, adding new trips;
• a key approver works across sites or travels often, so signatures wait for days;
• jobs or deliveries are regularly delayed by paperwork;
• fuel and vehicle costs are under review;
• staff are being asked to drive in conditions that create safety concerns.

What better looks like

The aim is to move information, not people. Three changes do most of the work.

Approvals that travel to the approver

Digital approvals let a request reach the decision-maker wherever they are. Microsoft's overview of Approvals in Teams describes how a request can be created from a chat or the approvals hub, with files attached and approvers chosen, and how both sender and approver can see all past approvals and who has responded in one place. Other platforms offer similar features. The important part is that the request, the decision and the record live together.

Many businesses keep paper signatures out of habit rather than legal need. South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act exists to facilitate and regulate electronic communications and transactions. Whether a specific document can be approved electronically depends on the document and the business's own policies, so take advice for anything with legal formalities, but most internal approvals such as purchase orders, leave and expense claims do not need wet ink.

Information visible where the work happens

If people walk to the office to check stock, job status or drawings, put that information on a tablet, a shared screen or a phone at the point of work. Read-only access is often enough.

Clear routing

Some trips happen because people do not know who can approve what, so they go looking. A published approval matrix stops that, as discussed in when staff need to ask who approves what.

Practical first steps

1. Count the trips. For two weeks, record why people leave their workstation or site to get information or a decision.
2. Group the reasons. Most trips fall into a handful of categories, such as purchase approvals, stock checks or leave forms.
3. Digitise the top two. Move the two most frequent reasons to digital approval or shared visibility.
4. Check the paper rules. Ask your auditor or adviser which documents genuinely need physical signatures. The list is usually shorter than expected.
5. Measure again. Repeat the count after a month to confirm the trips have stopped.

The bottom line

Walking a form to a manager, or driving paperwork between sites, turns skilled employees into couriers and leaves their real work waiting. The cost is spread across many small journeys, which is why it survives. Moving the information instead of the person is usually cheap, quick and immediately visible in the time it gives back.

Sources and further reading

• What are the 7 Wastes in Lean? - Lean Enterprise Institute (last verified 10 October 2026)
• What is Approvals? - Microsoft Support (last verified 10 October 2026)
• Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 - South African Government (last verified 10 October 2026)

Related Mellorca reading

• Fixing Avoidable Mistakes Instead of Serving Customers: The Cost of Rework
• Policing Routine Work: The Management Cost of Checking Recurring Tasks by Hand
• Hours Lost to Formatting: The Cost of Tidying Documents and Spreadsheets by Hand