Finding Better Solutions for Employee File Sharing

There are many reasons why employees need to share files with each other. Sometimes, employees need other team members to read and sign off on a document and other times employees all work together to create and edit a graph, report or presentation. This makes employee file sharing a key business issue and one that your office needs to manage effectively.

For many offices, the standard method of employee file sharing involves employees sharing files with each other via email attachment. However, this method has significant drawbacks. Every time one employee emails a file to another employee, a second copy of the file is created. Imagine an employee emailing a document to 10 team members and asking for edits. With this method, the file gets copied 10 times and each team member edits a unique document. If each of the 10 team members then sends his edited file to the full team, there are now 100 separate copies of the document stored to the company server, each with different edits.

Offices need better solutions to the employee file sharing problem. One of the most common solutions is to work with a third-party cloud computing system. These cloud computing systems include popular options such as Dropbox and Google Drive and allow employees to share and edit files without creating the multiple copies that come from email attachments.

With cloud computing, each file is only stored once. When employees work together to create or edit the files, they all edit the same file and the edit history is clearly visible. It is a great method for handling the employee file sharing problem while also saving space on company servers.

Cloud computing also solves another key employee file sharing issue: how employees access files when they are away from the office. When employees email themselves files to work on at home or make copies of files on personal thumb drives, they create unnecessary copies of those files. By opening company files via a personal email address or thumb drive, they also run the risk of compromising company security and exposing company information to viruses or malware on their personal computers.

Using cloud computing keeps company security intact even when employees open files at home. Cloud computing also gives employees an easy method of sharing and accessing files whether they are at work, at home or on business trips. Although businesses that are new to cloud computing sometimes wonder whether "the cloud" is secure, the truth is that cloud computing services are so secure that even healthcare providers are turning to cloud resources to store and manage their data.

Companies that want to create an easy, secure method of employee file sharing nearly always turn to cloud computing or an in-house IT solution that mirrors third-party cloud computing options. If your staff is still sending files to each other via email attachment, you need to provide better solutions. Look for cloud computing options that allow employees to share files easily while keeping your company's proprietary information secure.

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