5 Office Tips for Improving Productivity

Productivity in the
workplace is so important. The price tag for lost productivity is a whopping
$544 billion each year. If your team isn’t productive, you lose out on valuable
working hours, and will have difficulty meeting milestones and goals. Fortunately,
there are several things you can do to improve productivity within the office.
With that in mind, here are five tips for improving workplace productivity:

Clean
Up the Clutter

There are several
studies that have determined how clutter has a negative impact on your
productivity. In the workplace, clutter can happen very naturally. Things pile
up, and staff gets busy. But a cluttered desk or office can thwart your ability
to work productively, dampen your mood, and create stress. This is why it’s so
important to provide your team with the tools they need to clean clutter and keep their spaces organized. Give them the
organizers, paper trays, file cabinets, and other items necessary to keep
things tidy. You can even make an event out of office cleanups; perhaps once
per quarter, your team will spend half a day cleaning and organizing their
spaces (and cleaning up their digital space, too).

Use
Project Manage Tools

Project management tools
are a great way to help streamline tasks and boost productivity among
individuals and teams. Tools like Basecamp, Asana, Trello, and Wunderlist are
all great apps that help manage projects and day-to-day operations. It’s important
to try out free trials for a handful of platforms to determine which works best
for you. Some tools also have easy integration with messaging platforms you
might already be using. For example, both Trello and Asana can be integrated
directly into Slack, one of the most popular messaging systems for offices.

Offer
Some Privacy

Today’s innovative businesses are changing the way they curate collaborative spaces by having open office concepts. However, it’s important to understand that open office concepts aren’t always the answer: many employees actually prefer a bit of privacy. An extensive study found that the open office workplace design actually yielded less human-to-human interaction.

Compared to traditional
office setups, employees who worked in open floor plan setups had email and
instant messaging usage that was up by 67%, and there were 73% less time spent
with face-to-face interactions. Previous research has found that open floor
plans made it difficult for employees to concentrate on their work and
focus—especially when it came to brainstorming, number crunching, and working
on high-level projects that require deeper levels of concentration.

“To help improve productivity, talk to your staff about how you can aid their privacy and consider their input as you rework your workplace and office flow,” says ROSI Office System, a company that produces some of the best priced cubicles in Houston.

Bring
the Outside In

Incorporating nature
into your office is a unique way to boost productivity among your staff. It’s
no secret that nature helps people better connect with their environment and
with themselves. When you connect with nature, you can improve your mood, your
cognition, your sense of well-being, and your health. As John Muir once
famously said, “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out
till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

Adding a bit of foliage doesn’t just bring in a nice creative touch to the space. In the business world, plants are also known for their ability to improve productivity. A study from Harvard analyzed the results of productivity across 10 high-performances offices in the United States, and found that those who worked in green environments had better cognitive function, information usage, strategy planning, and crisis response.

The study states, “They
found that cognitive performance scores for the participants who worked in the
green+ environments were, on average, double those of participants who worked
in conventional environments; scores for those working in green environments
were 61% higher.

Put
the Phone Away

Even when you think
simple glances towards your phone throughout the day don’t matter, the truth
is, it adds up. One report, titled “Smartphone addiction, daily interruptions
and self-reported productivity,” found that smartphones have a negative impact
on productivity in the workplace. This is because it disrupts the natural flow
of a person’s work task. Your workflow pertains to the interrupted dedication
to a something specific, and just a one second interruption could change that
flow completely.  

The post 5 Office Tips for Improving Productivity appeared first on Entrepreneurship Life.