I need help with my office organisation! It is a mess that does nothing to help with my productivity. A happy tidy office space is a must when you work from home! Here are some top tips to help with office organisation.
Regardless of what shape or size your office is you need to think about what’s a good and productive office environment for your business, for yourself and for any other employees.
It essentially doesn’t matter whether you work from your bed, a desk located in a big open-plan space, a private office smack-bang in the City Centre or from a small crowded incubator space — you need to organize your environment and your office so that it’s optimised for productivity!
There are plenty of ways that you can organise your office. How you go about it often depends on what kind of business you’re running, whether you’re in an actual office or are using the spare room, and how many employees are in the business.
If you’re looking for a magic bullet, there is none. It takes time and sometimes money to organise an office space effectively.
To get you started here’s a simple roadmap to how you can organise your office and optimise your environment for productivity. Let’s crack on!
1 — Purge, sort and clear your space
Before you get properly into the swing of organising, have a proper clear-out! Yes, it’s a big project. But the fact of the matter is that when a space is clean and well organised it’s good for productivity and therefore good for business.
Be ruthless about your office props, tools and knick-knacks. If no one has used something for months, does it really need to take up space in the office? I am not going to be getting rid of Ganesh though!
2 — Essentials vs. clutter
Desks are particularly bad for gathering old paperwork, general clutter and knick-knacks. Get everyone to clear their desks back to the bare necessities. Perhaps even build this into your quarterly routine.
Now, a bunch of basically empty desks are no fun either. Perhaps note down a few office guidelines on desk decor and maintenance and then leave people in charge of their own space.
3 — Outsource your archives
Even new businesses will have a lot of paperwork and stuff that needs to be kept. Some of those things you need regular access to whilst others you really don’t.
If you have stuff that you do not need regular access to, why not gather it all and chuck it in a storage unit facility like Storage Vault. This way you’ll not have to worry about moving a pile of boxes every time you need in the stationary cupboard and you can perhaps even make do with a smaller office and save some money on rent.
4 — Establish work zones
If you’ve got an actual office with actual other employees then it’s important to establish work zones as well as a more relaxing zone.
It’s super easy for people to fall into the habit of doing work, having mini-meetings and lunching at their desk. This isn’t ideal! Sitting down a whole day from 9-5 in the same one chair is not at all healthy!
If you’ve got the room why not make space for a few different zones or stations. Perhaps introduce a lunch table, a sofa and a chair, maybe even a tall table for whenever someone needs a change of posture or scenery.
When slouching for a good 8 hours a day all week there will be side effects and this will impact employees wellbeing and general happiness.
5 — Use office dividers
Office dividers can be super handy for dividing your office space into zones. Grab a snazzy KALLAX room divider from IKEA and make one room into two, or invest in a proper screen divider.
There are a bunch of ways that you can divvy up a room, if you’re looking for inspiration then Pinterest is a good shout!
When you use office dividers you help remove visual distractions and help enhance privacy for your employees! This can really help boost your productivity if you’re struggling.
If you’re an SME there will inevitably come a time where you have too many people in one room doing too different tasks for it to be a productive environment. Some employees need peace and quiet whilst others work well with a bit of chat in between tasks. Office dividers provide a practical and cheap short-term solution for when you’re on the brink of expansion!
6 — Clever cable management
There are so many cables in an office. So many!
Everyone has their own desktop cables, half the staff have a second monitor, there are spare phone chargers, printer cables, spare printer cables, a pile of headphones with no owners. If you don’t manage the cables in your office it will be a madhouse of wires and it will look very cluttered.
There are a lot of different ways of managing cables these days. You can add some under desk baskets for organising the cables coming off the desk. There are cable boxes for sitting on the ground. Or you can get desks that have built-in cable storage.
7 — Cloud & file management
Hypothetically, say you quit your job today. Would someone be able to login to your computer or drive and carry on where you took off? Would they be able to dig out the old balance sheet from 2016 if they needed it? Or a press release from back in February? If your answer is no then you need to figure out a way sort your files.
Digital filing is no different from traditional filing, excepts it’s a lot easier to search through thanks to technology.
If you’ve got a shared drive in the office draw up a quick tree visualisation of what goes where. Have one main folder for each department, i.e. one for accounts, one for marketing, one for production and so on and then make one person on each team responsible for setting up a filing system that’s intuitive and works for the department!
8 — Clean your desk, every day
A desk can get messy fast! Papers build up, there’s a new coffee stain for every day, there are snacks, a few notebooks, it all adds up!
Generally, people work better when their space is tidy, encouraging and not distracting!
An easy way to manage desk clutter is to implement a simple rule that you should leave your desk tidy and clean at the end of the day. Tidy your papers, give the desk a wipe if it’s dirty and you’ll thank yourself when you start up again the next day.
This is a collaborative post.
4 Responses
This is a great solution. When you work at home, and you do not have much space-it is a little more difficult to arrange it, but it is still real. Glass partitions can perfectly protect the necessary area, visit doors 22 site to learn more and see real examples.
I would recommend using more smart technologies for the office – https://www.mapiq.com/smart-office-solutions which can really help you organize the space and make it efficient for you or your employees
Thanks for article.