Isn’t it nice to look at your workspace when everything is neat, tidy, and in proper places? When was the last time you felt that? Today? A month ago? If you can’t remember the last time you were inspired by your office’s organization, it’s time to do a cleanup. It shouldn’t take too much of your time to get things in order. Putting up shelves and drawers and labelling them using a label printer should be easy. What’s not easy is understanding why this is important for a business.
How Disorganization Affects Productivity
That’s exactly how you will feel when you organize your office space. Studies show that clutter and untidiness lead to depression. And when your employees are depressed, there is no way they can be productive. The less organized you are, the more time you will spend searching for things because you don’t know where you put them. By the time you find what you’ve been looking for, you would have already wasted an hour that you should have used to do your work.
At the same time, the lack of organization will cause you to miss deadlines and meetings. You’ll probably arrive late to work, too, because you’ve overslept and missed your bus. That is stressful. It is stressful to miss your bus or your bus stop because you fell asleep. It is stressful to run up a flight of stairs because the meeting is about to start. This will affect your physical, emotional, and mental health. It is exhausting to always run after meetings and meet deadlines.
Stress creates a cycle of exhausting and unproductiveness. When you’re stressed, you feel exhausted and lethargic. It becomes so difficult to complete tasks when you’re tired. All you want to do is to lie in bed and just forget about your responsibilities. As a result, your work piles up, and you get more frustrated seeing the amount of work that you need to attend to. It’s an unhealthy cycle that will not end until you figure out the source of your stress, which can be triggered by a disorganized office.
An Organized Office Means a Safe and Healthy Workforce
A messy office can present safety and health concerns for the workers. Old food kept in the refrigerator can grow mould. This can infect other food products (including drinks) in the refrigerator. Employees may be exposed to bacteria and harmful microorganisms that will cause them to fall ill. Unruly cables and spilt liquids can cause someone to slip and fall. Uneven piling of boxes on tall cabinets may cause said boxes to fall on someone. These accidents can be prevented, but it takes effort from everyone to have an organized office.
Keeping the office organized is easier than letting things pile up and suffering the consequences later. It’s going to take you less than two seconds to put your pencil in the holder or the stapler in your drawer. Being organized is a discipline. Practice it every day, and in no time, you’ll have a neat and tidy office.
