What are the advantages and disadvantages of Typing Pool?

After the matter has been dictated, it is to be typed before it is sent out. Outgoing letters from a concern must be attractive, legible and lucid. Good correspondence creates good impression on the customers and goodwill for the firm.

The draft, prepared or dictated matter is handed over to the typist who types it. When four or five copies are required, carbon paper is used. When more copies are needed, a duplicating machine can be used economically. There are two ways to arrange the type work in big concerns Centralized and decentralized typing.

Centralised or Typing Pool

The typing work of each department is done at a central place, called typing pool. Each department has to send drafts to the typing pool and they, in turn, return them afterwards along with the typed matter. This method has its own merits and demerits.

Merits of Typing Pool

1. Equal distribution of work amongst the typists will be done by the supervisor-in- charge.

2. When there is a typing pool, there is an economy of time and expense, say 25%, because the number of typists in the pool can be reduced. Otherwise each department has a typist; for example, if there are seven departments each department needs a typist. When there is pool system, the number of typists can easily be reduced to four or five.

3. Since the pool is in one place, other departments are not disturbed by the noise of typing.

4. New comers to the post of typist can easily be trained in the pool.

5. It is possible to measure the efficiency of each typist.

6. When a job is decentralized, and when the executive is away or on tour, the stenographer has to sit idly without job. In the pool there will not be any time to waste, because general works of the organization can be attended to.

Demerits of Typing Pool

1. Personal touch with the executive is lost.

2. All the typists of the pool do not possess knowledge of technical words; hence errors may creep in.

3. Secrecy cannot be maintained.

4. Since there is no personal touch between the typist and the executive, sincerity is also lost.