What should an office look like?
Working in an office which looks good, and feels good, is what all employees want. It’s unpleasant to work somewhere that is dreary and plain, without any sort of feel about it. All employees want to look forward to coming to work, and it’s important to allow them to enjoy their working space.
Remove filing cabinets and unused storage space.
If paper has nowhere to gather, it won’t. When refurbishing an office, ensure that there is little room storage. Drawers are a good idea, to keep the essential paperwork. Give your office some space and room to be utilized properly.
Throw away the things in filing cabinets and storage.
Nobody needs to keep mountains and mountains of paperwork. It is much more efficient and safer to store everything online or to save it on a computer or drive. If employees are printing out information which can be easily remembered or found on the internet, then put a policy in place to only print out essential information. As well as saving lots of space, you will save money on printers, printer ink, paper, and lost time waiting for the information to be printed out.
Flush out unused books and eliminate dated information.
Offices can quickly be amassed with unused, unneeded and dated books. There was a time when books were essential additions to any office, as staff could pick up a book and find the information, research or answers they needed. However, that has all changed as now information can easily be found on the internet in seconds. The internet doesn’t take up literal space, but books do. Unless there are books in the office that are used a lot and are useful to the business, get rid of them. It could also be a good idea to digitize information from books that all staff can access on internal communication platforms or shared folders. You could take photos of the useful pages and upload them. With books gone, there will be a lot of useful space available.
If you have masses of books or projects-in-progress sitting on your desk, think about moving them out of your line of sight.
When you’re trying to focus on the task at hand, and to a deadline, sometimes the visual reminder of all the other stuff you have to do can cause distraction and stress. It may be easier to just put other projects, lists and books on your desk rather than storing them away, but these can cause procrastination and lack of work being completed.
If procrastination is a major aspect of staff, then you could declutter their work computers by deleting all the icons from the desktop and replacing them with an inspirational background, a plain background or the company logo. Replace any potentially distracting visual cues with new ones that actually lend a hand in your employees staying focused and productive. It could be something as simple as replacing clutter with pens, notepads, photos of calm and relaxation or allowing employees to choose photos.
