How We Do Things: How We Use Google Forms to Communicate, Store, Collaborate and Manage Our Company

As a small government contracting company, Preting strives to continuously find better, more efficient ways to conduct business, communicate with employees, and run our back-office systems.

One way we do this is with the Google Suite. For $5 a month per user, Google offers a wide range of services to communicate, store, collaborate, and manage a company.

Preting began using the Google Suite for email and storage years ago. Then, with some trial and error, we discovered more options like Google Hangouts – group conference calls with screen share, Google Sheets – live spreadsheets that allow for real time multiuse editing, and Google Forms – a platform to easily build a survey, collect information, or streamline acknowledgement for Preting’s processes.

With Google Forms, Preting has streamlined the on-boarding process, company policy format, and company surveys in a professional and well-organized manner. Here are a few examples of how we use Google Forms:

1. 1. Company Policies – Tracking and updating policies can be challenging for any business. With Google Forms, our policy documents include fields for name and date. The responses are always saved, and we can review the responses and sort by either the full list or by each individual response.
   2. Security – We developed a Google Form for the initial security steps for new hires and acknowledgements that satisfy our security inspection requirements.
   3. Surveys – Google Forms is a great way to create, distribute, and analyze surveys. By using Google Forms for surveys, we can see all the responses (anonymously), review feedback, and improve our processes. The Google Form also notifies us via email when someone completes the form. This was a significant bonus as the pace of business operations increased allowing us more time to review the feedback.

1. Onboarding New Employees – The onboarding process can seem overwhelming with all the required paperwork (e.g., W-4, I-9, state tax form, direct deposit info, benefits enrollment, etc.). We uploaded many onboarding forms into Google Forms like our general information form that new employees now complete electronically.
2. Employee Reviews – We found that Google Forms are an efficient way to accomplish our 90-day and one year anniversary employee Goals Sessions. In parallel, the employee and the manager fill out similar forms, and then Google Forms saves the final data for the manager to review, go over with employee, and include in the final Goals Session Packet. This has made our employee reviews easier for everyone.

Google Forms also allows you to customize forms with pictures, text, and color. We have added our company colors of orange and gray to keep the forms consistent with other Preting-branded materials. Our employees also appreciate the ease of using the online forms, and we have eliminated many steps in our approval process.

As you can see, we are grateful for the Google Suite tools that enable us to communicate, store, collaborate, and manage our company. What systems does your company use to make your job easier?