How To Keep Your Office Environment Clean & Comfortable
8 Ways To Keep Your Office Environment Clean & Comfortable
A calm and orderly working environment is the key to a harmonious team dynamic and productive, focused mind. There is a link between the mind and the body, which the best and most innovative corporations are only just beginning to understand. Here are some tips which can help you make that connection work for you and your team.
1. Reorganize
On the one hand, reorganizing the outward parts of your office might seem superficial; however, the inward effects of wellbeing, calmness, and order are worth every bit of going through this initially disruptive process. It is amazing how many things can clutter up your workplace; sticky notes, paperclips, pens, miscellaneous paperwork. Get rid of it all, and have just a small desk fan placed strategically beside a sleek laptop, thus keeping your brain at the right temperature. A clean work surface is essential to creating a clear mind.
2. Daily
Why invest in a weekly team bonding experience, or even therapy, when you could use stacking the dishwasher, sweeping, and emptying the trash instead? Doing this daily and as a team will not only cleans your environment of its harmful bacteria and allergens, but leaves a lasting sense of accomplishment, and makes the start of the next day as positive as possible. Who looks forward to coming into a pigsty the following morning!
3. Vacuum
When you think about the extent of the footfall on your office floor, it is exponentially way higher than anything you’ll ever have at home, and you still vacuum with a handheld vacuum a few times a week at home, if not more. Vacuuming should be done multiple times daily, as a way of life at work. It will give a chance for your team to take responsibility not only for the work they produce but the conditions in which they produce it. Your office air purifier or purifiers as a consequence will have less work to do, and the air they purify will be purer more quickly, thus extending their lifespan and saving you money.
4. Target
No one wants to clean the toilet, but if you make targets so it is equally distributed, then it won’t be nearly as arduous or revolting as it might at first appear. It’s not that you’re trying to out-do your professional, paid cleaners but trying to create the cleanest and most hygienic working environment possible. In a time of pandemic and social distancing, this couldn’t be more relevant.
5. Hire
The outside of your office building is equally worth properly maintaining. Window cleaning services are not massively expensive; having crystal clear windows allows passers-by to see that you mean business, workers that there is a crispness and a precision about your company that will inevitably flow into their tasks and responsibilities. Any panoramic or natural views which your office windows afford can be uplifting and positive for wellbeing, so this is a clever and worthwhile investment to make.
6. Clean
It is amazing how much grime, grease, and bacteria can build up on keyboards, desk surfaces, monitors, displays, screens, tables, chairs, and many other things. Screen liquid, anti-bacterial wipes, hand sanitizers, furniture polish, and plenty of microfiber cloths ought to be abundant in your office workspace. No one should ever be eating or, for that matter, drinking anything anywhere near a computer station or personal desk. Make the kitchen and coffee area as welcoming and well stocked as possible. This will also encourage social interaction, team bonding, and camaraderie; all well worth their weight in gold.
7. Chair
A comfortable, ergonomic office chair belongs not in the workspace area, but in the lounge or coffee area (with a soda maker). The place where you want employees to relax and interact is not at the computer or desk, but in the designated places where proper, quality time can be enjoyed by the team. Consider making the standing desk mandatory for work-stations and encourage more breaks. Counterintuitively this will end up improving the quality of the work being done; it’s about the outcome rather than the seconds, minutes and hours spent glued to a screen. A healthier, more comfortable, cleaner team will be sick less often and will produce more than a similar team that lacks these strengths.
8. Wires
Hanging wires and other power cables can be unsightly, dangerous, and can undo all the good work you’ve implemented in other areas of your office. You can use a power strip or a surge protector so that you only need to use one charging outlet. Expert advice is worth seeking in order that various other strategic panels and design features can obscure and hide bunches of dangling cables which can project an amateur, ‘geeky’ ambiance, rather than the smooth, professional aura of calmness and confidence which is so much more impressive for workers and visitors alike.
Overall, the importance of mental wellbeing and collegiate togetherness is not to be underestimated. A productive company is a clean and comfortable one, in which hygiene, team bonding, and sparkling clarity are helping the mind, and so the body.
Sources:
- Office Ergonomics – UNC Environment, Health and Safety
- 15 Office Design Tricks That Will Increase Your Productivity at Work – Lifehack