The Simple Start
Organizing an office is an art. And art is to be appreciated and worked with for a very long time to make it the best. There is no plan B or a back-door for art, it is to be worshipped, and there is no other choice one can make. But the ways to be followed can be made easier. It is to be understood that for every art to be a success, a planned procedure is to be followed. Dividing the task into a few simple steps always helps. Planning alone never works if one does not work on it. But planning is an important part of organizing your office.
You cannot simply have your employees organize the office without a sure plan about how you would want the office to eventually look. You must be able to provide a sound roadmap that handles the entire process of office organization like clockwork. This requires a lot of considerations like: Office productivity
For many workspaces, productivity is sacrosanct. It is one aspect of work that cannot be sacrificed. This is why you would have to, first of all, understand how willing you are to give up on productivity in order to organize the office effectively. Your employees would have to take the time out to organize their own files or to identify the paperwork that needs to be kept and the ones that need to go away.
Depending on your office structure, you may end up using all the employees or some of them to properly organize the office. If your office deals with a lot of paperwork, then all employees handling paperwork will probably have to go through the ones that must be kept. Even if you hire a third party team for the work, your own employees will have an understanding of which paper belongs where.
In addition to handling paperwork, the extent of office organization that you are planning on may or may not make it possible for your employees to work at the same time. If you will be dealing with the installation of new furniture, then you would either have to schedule it on a day when the office has the least number of employees. This could be either the weekends or on a holiday. You can even consider doing it during after office hours if your office does not work round the clock. Your employees would not be able to work productively with other things like furniture installation going on in the background.
The span of time needed to complete the process
Since you are at the planning stage, give some thought to the length of time that will be spent in organizing your office. Will it be just a one-day work? Or will you have to distribute the whole process over a period of a week or a month? This will also make a direct impact on productivity.
By projecting a span of time within which the work can be effectively completed, you will be able to prepare the office staff in a better way for the upcoming office organization. This will also help you effectively plan the entire process and prepare how you could make up for the loss of productivity during the period of office organization.
This is just a projected length of time. You may want to add a few days extra to it to make sure that you have adequate time in hand to complete the process of organizing the office without having to rush through it. It can be a day, a week, or a month, depending on the size of your office and the extent of the organization you plan to achieve.
The areas which require organization if not the entire office
Your planning must clearly identify the areas in your office that will be overhauled and organized. Some areas will be employee-specific. The responsibility of reorganizing these areas will usually fall directly on the employee using that area. This can be a particular cabin for a manager or a special workstation assigned to the accountant or the reception desk handled by the receptionist.
Will your office organization affect these areas? Or are you concentrating on public areas only, like the cafeteria space, the common workstations, or the employee resting zones? Organizing an office requires insight into the daily activities of employees whose work will be directly affected by the organization process.
Would it involve a third party?
Do you plan to involve outsiders like a company that can assist in the process of the organization? You can involve an interior designer to help you redesign your office to make it more organized. Other people may include carpenters, upholstery workers, cleaners, garbage collectors, etc. If your office already has a staff that can handle most of these works, then the involvement of the third party will be lesser.
Your budget for organizing the office will greatly depend on the amount of outside help you will be using. Security will also become more of a concern when more outsiders have access to the office. When third parties are involved, your planning should include security considerations and they should have clear information about the areas that they have access to and the areas which they cannot access.
Protecting office records during the process of cleaning up
While outsiders can be a threat to confidential information, personal records must also be protected from employees who are not authorized to access such data. For example, the Human Resources team may include data that should be securely handled during the process of organizing your office.
Important client data should also be secured before the process of office organization begins. Depending on the kind of business you handle and the extent of records you keep, this data can be very little or a lot. If your business is still keeping paper records, then your step to organizing the office can include digitization of these records to improve office space and to reduce paper wastage.
Introducing equipment and processes which will keep your office organized
Offices can be organized with the help of existing furniture or by introducing new furniture. If you are planning to bring in new furniture, repurpose existing ones and to replace old equipment like printers, computers, and any other office equipment, then you must make sure that you plan your office space accordingly. If new furniture will be installed in addition to the existing ones, then spaces must be planned to keep the work environment easy to navigate through.
If new furniture will take place of the old ones, then their sizes have to be planned to make sure that they fit perfectly without interfering in the paths and aisles that have been created for moving around the office.
Calculating a budget
Begin with a detailed list as to what is required and what is not. Try to keep unimportant stuff to a minimum, the less, the better. Take a tour in your office and see what type of rooms are present, check the furniture, see if there’s a section for food and indoor games, and finally an outdoor games playground.
After having a detailed survey, make a list of things required. The list may contain usual things like a better choice in color of lights, proper AC and desktops maintenance, change to cozy sofas, or even better maintenance staff. It is to be mentioned that the desktops or PCs used at offices should also be organized.
Once you know what you will need and whether third parties will be involved in the process, you can create a rough estimate of the amount you may end up spending to organize your office. This can help you adjust your budget or prioritize the organization of important office areas depending on the budget you have allocated.
Would you like to read more about this topic? This book might interest you: Organizing an Office.