Those working in some of the most popular industries could be saving the equivalent of an airplane load of documents within just three days, research has revealed.
To examine how many files are used and saved per day, business solutions specialists Gradwell Communications conducted primary research to discover differences of the file use between various industries.
Using standouts from the data, the research highlighted four industries to be of particular interest, which was then used to create corresponding character profiles to represent their files in reality.
These character profiles included:
| Industry | Job | Gender | Age | Device | Common file type used |
| Customer services | Call centre worker | Male | 18-24 | Tablet | Word |
| Health | Dentist | Female | 25-34 | Mobile | |
| Education | College lecturer | Female | 35-44 | Computer | Images |
| IT and computer science | Data analyst at a finance/accounting firm | Male | 45-54 | Laptop | Excel |
Concentrating on the most common device that a person working in these roles might use, and combining these with the average number of files that are typically saved per day, visual representations of what a person’s file storage looks like were created.
Proving just how tech savvy the UK is, the profession coming out on top was IT, with ring binder files towering the height of the Baltimore Wharf Tower in London, within just 24 hours.
A typical call center worker also ranked high – in just one and a half days they could be filling the interior of a car with ring binders full of their workplace documents. After nine days, the same person could be filling an average sized house with their files, if they were printed out and took up physical space, rather than digital.
Interestingly, it isn’t just the more traditionally computer-based professions that appear to be saving a vast amount of work on their devices. The primary research found that those working in the education sector typically store more images than the three other sectors, and could be filling the equivalent of a double decker bus in just 10 days.
Health care workers, specifically dentists in this instance, are also using numerous files per day. Keeping track of patient information, medical history, treatment records, and so on, on average a worker in the industry could fill up a lorry with their workplace files in as little as five days.
