KEEPING YOUR OFFICE ORGANIZED

4/10/2018 (Permalink)

Organizing an office is time consuming, and you might be tempted to put it off. If you consider how much disorganization can cost you in the long run, you might reconsider!

Knowing where things are and being able to find them right away will save you and your staff minutes wasted locating vital information or objects, and minutes turn into hours.

An office organization project doesn’t have to happen all at once; it can be done a little at a time. It might even be more effective if you go slowly and give it a lot of thought using everyone’s input. Let your staff help you decide where things should go, and what would work best for them as they go through their day. This will positively affect the productivity of the entire office and create content workers who can find what they need in a manner that makes the most sense to their workflow.

 Here are some helpful tips:

• Purge! Shred, empty, and get rid of everything you don’t really need. Take a good look around and identify those items you haven’t used in at least six months. Your archived records need to be kept, of course, but for how long? If you haven’t already, set up an archive schedule that allows for discarding records that are older than you need them to be. If anything isn’t in working order, and it can’t be fixed in a timely manner, throw it away. Encourage your staff to minimize their desktop knickknack collections; if they can’t find time to dust everything weekly, then some things will have to go!
• Pick it up! Gather up items around the office that aren’t where they should be and put them away.
• Zones! Determine the type of work that happens in each area of your office. From the main workspace to the reference area, supply area, make sure that the appropriate supplies and equipment are being kept in the places that make the most sense. Those items that are used the most should be within reach if at all possible.
• Labels! Get a label maker, and label bins, baskets, shelves - so everyone knows where things belong. This will help with the daily pickup that needs to be done to keep an office organized.
• Filing! Can your filing system be revised and become more digital than it has been? Are you duplicating your documents? You may be able to eliminate a lot of confusion if you can get rid of paper files beyond a certain time frame that you will establish.
• Desks! Organize your own desk: the top, the drawers, underneath - everywhere that you have stored things. Make sure you can get to what you need quickly on a daily basis so that you aren’t wasting company time digging through junk. Use trays for a neater desktop paper system; even if you know where things are, on a sick day the person filling in will have no idea unless it is clearly designated, and time is wasted, once again.

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