Online administration platform Doccle announces the survey results of a questionnaire about Belgians and their administration. Within the framework of the Digital Week, which runs from 20 October to 5 November, Doccle had a survey carried out on a representative sample of 1,051 Belgian households.
The administrative red tape is a full-time job for more than two weeks a year
Belgians spend an average of 1.6 hours a week on their administration; this is 83.2 hours on a yearly basis, or more than two full-time working weeks. This responsibility is often borne by one person in the family: three out of four indicate that they take care of virtually all the family’s administration. Women are more often ‘the victim’ than men.
Almost half of all Belgians occasionally pay payment reminders. Nine out of ten Belgians consider it important to pay invoices in time, this number is a lot lower for fines, with six out of ten. This could be an indication of procrastination: perhaps we secretly hope that a fine will go away if we do not pay it?
How long should all these documents lie around, gathering dust?
It is not only difficult to handle documents in time, keeping them for the correct amount of time is guesswork. Two out of three Belgians do not know how long they should keep their bank statements, four out of ten do not know how long they should keep their payslips, and almost nobody knows how long you should keep documents for the tax authority. This is how the red tape piles up.
We handle things well, even if we say so ourselves
But just how well do Belgians consider themselves? More than half give themselves a score of eight or more out of ten for his/her ‘administrative skills’. About three out of four Belgians give themselves seven or more out of ten. And practice makes perfect: confidence in personal skills increases with age. Those who use digital administration tools also give themselves a better score.
Digital divide: there is hope
Forty percent still does half or more of their paperwork by hand, on paper. And yet, more and more people are working digitally. Thirteen percent even indicate that they do their administration fully digitally. This is also a phenomenon common to all age groups: we have found no significant differences between age groups as far as the use of digital administration tools is concerned.
According to Doccle, digital administration is ‘the way forward’. It is a hopeful sign that the older generations are also clearly on board. And according to the questionnaire, almost 96% of Belgians have the right equipment for tackling it.
Reaction of Bram Lerouge
Bram Lerouge, CEO of Doccle: ‘Clearly, people are looking for one single solution. But it must be one they can trust. That takes time. But quality also plays a part: whatever tool Belgians will use for their administration in the future, it must be the best solution that is available on the market. So in my view, it makes no sense for different suppliers to each develop their own tool for these invoices, and to bombard Belgians with them from all quarters.’
There is however a divide between the highly educated and the low-skilled. Low-skilled people prefer keeping to paper: three out of ten of them still do the administration by hand. Another striking aspect is that women use physical or paper aids more than men do (files, post-Its, to-do lists). On the other hand, men use email, apps and cloud systems more than women to keep control of the red tape.
Digital administration saves 31 hours a year.
The more digital we are, the less time we spend on administration. Those who work fully digitally, save 31 hours of the administrative burden compared with those who do everything by hand.
Moreover, fans of paperwork drown in documents. They systematically overestimate the legally required retention period, causing their paperwork to pile up unnecessarily.
Will Facebook be buying your administration tomorrow?
Belgians indicate that they are especially seeking safety and privacy in a digital, online administration platform.
Bram Lerouge explains: “We at Doccle realise this better than anyone else. Doccle employs a ‘privacy by design’ model. Each organisation that sends documents via Doccle is co-owner of the system. There are more than 50 cooperants, so a group like Facebook cannot buy out the whole lot and make off with our end users’ private data.’
Retrieve any document within 30 seconds
These survey results do not surprise Sara Van Wesenbeeck, organizing expert and budget coach: ‘In my experience, people are usually successful in keeping a decent track on things. But a really watertight administration relies on a system. And usually, that system is missing. Really, you should have one single archive with different categories, where you put everything. What is my advice to people? In a well-organised archive, you should be able to find any document within 30 seconds!’
No more red tape!
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