10 Tips to Boost Office Productivity

Increasing Office Productivity

The office is supposed to be the place of productivity, focus and effectiveness, however, what if the place itself is what’s holding your team down. There is something you can do about office productivity.

1. Keep the Office Clean

It’s incredibly hard to organize and focus in a messy environment for several reasons. First, there are so many visual distractions all around that it will be hard for you to focus on the screen or the file that you’re working on.

Second, it’s quite difficult to find anything in this mess, which means that should you need an item that’s stored on your desk, it may take a while until you’re able to find it. This loss of time leads to a direct loss of office productivity.

2. Give People Enough Space

For the workplace to be efficiently organized, every single one of your employees needs to have enough personal space. According to one estimate, each of your employees needs about 11 square meters of personal space and it’s up to you to provide it to them. The first thing that this will avoid is the problem with tactile distractions. If you fail to do so, people will distract your employees by trying to squeeze next to them. Second, it’s vital in open floor office plans in order to provide everyone with a sense of privacy.

3. Obtain Quality Supplies and Work Equipment

The next thing you need to do in order to keep the place running is stock it up with adequate supplies and work equipment. You can start by providing each of your employees with reliable stationery and in order to get the most out of it, you can go with renowned suppliers like Winc. When buying technology, check the system specifications against your needs (tools and platforms that you’re about to use). This will help you avoid the loss of office productivity due to latency.

4. Reduce Office Noise

There’s probably nothing that’s more distracting to people than having to focus in a particularly noisy environment and there are a couple of things that you can do about this. First, you can reduce office noise by purchasing noise-canceling headphones and quiet keyboards.

Second, you can work on the overall acoustics of the office. Keep in mind that the latter is particularly effective in a scenario where most of the noise doesn’t come from within the office but rather from its neighborhood.

5. Invest in a Quality Coffee Machine

Coffee is a productivity fuel that most of the business world is running on. There are some serious studies claiming that caffeine improves mental performance and alertness, enhances your willpower and helps one learn faster. It’s clear how most of these skills would improve your performance in the office. The way in which you can exploit this is by supplying your office with an outstanding coffee maker and placing it in your kitchen area.

6. Create Recharge Rooms

Instead of going for a traditional break room, you might want to explore some extra options. For instance, there’s some proof that taking a 20-minute powernap may drastically improve your performance, so, why not outfit the office area that will help your employees in this regard. Next, more and more offices are providing office daycare and there are so many advantages to this practice. Other than this, you could also make a gym or a room for meditation in order to enhance your team’s motivation and mental/physical health.

7. Buy Ergonomic Office Furniture

It’s quite hard for one to give their best while they’re experiencing excruciating back pain. In order to resolve this, what you need to do is make an investment in ergonomic office furniture. Start by picking quality chairs that will benefit one’s posture and then proceed to select desks with adjustable height.

While we’re at it, it’s important to mention that the trend of standing desks is getting more and more popular by the hour, which is something that you should take into consideration. Fewer health issues also mean fewer sick days, which is yet another way in which this trend boosts your productivity.

8. Reduce Unnecessary Meetings

There’s one statistic according to which an average office worker spends about 31 hours each month in unnecessary meetings. Fewer hours of work are a direct loss of office productivity, which is why reducing this figure might just be one of your first priorities when it comes to boosting the productivity of your office. You can start by holding standing meetings instead of traditional ones and resolve some of the minor issues via a circular email. Sure, some meetings need to take a traditional format, but you will be surprised at just how few of them this applies to.

9. Institute Mandatory breaks

There are some people who are convinced that skipping a break is a trend that will increase their productivity. After all, they’re working longer, which means that they’re getting more done, right?

Well, not really. You see, as you work, your focus is steadily declining, which means that if you work for 5 hours straight, your focus during the first and during your fifth hour are nowhere near the same. Therefore, it’s vital that your staff takes regular breaks in order to make this vital reset. Consider and walking around.

10. Use Smart Task Delegation

Finally, by knowing your team, you’ll be able to properly delegate tasks among them by giving people responsibilities according to their skills, predispositions and interest. Keep in mind that this won’t always be a possibility since there are some tasks that no one wants. Even here, you need to try and be as fair as possible and make sure that everyone gets their turn.

Boost Office Productivity

As you can see, by abiding by these ten simple principles you’re bound to make your office more productive. This is since each of these trends makes an improvement when it comes to one aspect of productivity. This makes them reliable and, because they are seldom exclusive to one another, quite easy to combine.