How You Can Restructure Your Office for Prime Productivity

Workplace productivity is crucial for long-term business success. Every year, lost productivity cost companies $544 billion. If you’re dealing with an unproductive team, you’d be surprised to find that creating a better office culture can make all the difference. Your office should cultivate the desire to get things done and be happy to be at work. If you want to meet your milestones and goals, focus on creating a productive atmosphere. Here are a few ways you can do this:

Scan Your Paperwork 

Scanning your physical paperwork is a great way to clear up clutter in the office and scale your business in the long-run. Studies have shown that the average office worker uses roughly 10,000 sheets of paper on an annual basis. Another survey found that around 70% of office waste is paper, and that 30% of print jobs are actually never even removed from the printer tray and go straight to the trash. Furthermore, 17% of all paper waste ends up straight in landfill. Eliminating the bulk of your paper usage down to what’s absolutely necessary builds awareness in your office, allows you to be more eco-friendly, and cuts costs.

You can use a document scanning service to leverage the aforementioned benefits and to manage your paperwork much more seamlessly. In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven business landscape, you need a smart solution for document management. As your business grows, you should be able to locate hundreds of contracts, invoices, and employee files with just the click of a button. With a scanning software, you’re able to complete administrative tasks much quicker and better service customers and clients.

Get Rid of Clutter

We’ve already mentioned the importance of document scanning, which can eliminate a huge chunk of clutter. But office clutter in general should be cleaned up, especially when you’re working with a small office space. A study conducted by the National Association of Professional Organisers found that cluttered workspaces result in a financial loss equivalent to 10% of a manager’s salary in any particular organization.

The fact is, a cluttered desk and cluttered space do hurt staff’s ability to be productive. It creates stress, disorder, and distraction. With these things in mind, make the tools for a clutter-free space readily available to your team. Purchase storage trays and other organization tools that your staff can take advantage of. Your team will do the organization work for you when you’re happy to supply the supplies. You may even go the extra mile to keep things tidy. For example, once or twice a year, arrange an office clean-up day, where your staff works together to organize their physical and digital clutter, both in personal and common spaces.

Offer Some Privacy

Today’s modern workplaces are taking advantage of the “open concept” office, which encourages collaboration and communication. However, studies have found that employees do prefer the option for privacy. You might not always be able to give your team their own offices, but making it easy for staff members to have privacy will go a long way. Some research found that open floor concepts made certain areas of business management difficult for staff, especially when it came to brainstorming and number crunching.

Anything that requires a deeper level of concentration and independence might be a struggle for team members. To make this easier on your team, you might be interested in creating sectionalized cubicles for staff to go to when they need concentration or privacy. If you have smaller private offices for open use, that’s great, but this can’t always be the case, and you might need to be a little creative with your solutions.

Incorporate Plants

This may seem like a strange tip for improving workplace productivity, but bringing nature in does make a difference. In a study conducted by Harvard, they analyzed the office environments of 10 high-profile companies and found that those who worked in green environments had better strategy planning, crisis response, and cognitive function. Several other studies have demonstrated the benefits of plants in office spaces, and it’s no secret that because of our natural link to nature, we perform better with it around.