Workspace Organization Tips To Set You Up for Success

Staying at your highest productivity levels throughout the workday is often easier said than done—materials get misplaced, your workflow gets interrupted, and your time drains. If the procedures aren’t clear, even getting started is a challenge. 

Luckily for business owners, a few simple changes that focus on making a more effective workplace can significantly impact your team’s productivity. Let’s discuss how to improve workplace productivity through organization!

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Workflow is the ability to easily transition from one stage of a task to the next, and an unorganized workplace makes achieving good workflow nearly impossible. Efficiency is another key part of productivity that’s easily impacted by an unorganized process and even a disorganized physical space. Let’s explore some organization-focused solutions to help both your team’s workflow and your team’s efficiency.

Organize Tasks Using a System

Workflow is at its best when your team has an effective, organized system for their tasks. Whether physical or digital, it’s important that everyone on the team has a consistent way to see what’s next and start working on it. Creating a designated place for tickets, active campaigns, or papers that need scanning is one way to start. You can also use day-of-the-week stickers or due date stickers to make it clear when some tasks need to go through, removing any question of what’s next in the work queue.

Create an Effective Office Layout

Even how your workplace is laid out can impact productivity. Take a step back and consider how your workplace is organized, from the position of any desks and tables to where you keep materials like gloves, staples, or paper. It’s incredibly inefficient for someone who constantly needs new gloves to have to run to the back to get them every time. Simply rearranging the space with each role’s needs in mind can seriously improve productivity.

Aside from making supplies more accessible for the team members that need them, you can also focus on using office organization to limit distractions. Consider rearranging so that teams who need to collaborate can do so without interrupting the productivity of others. You can also organize the layout of your workspace so that employees have clear pathways for getting around that don’t leave them saying “excuse me” to every co-worker they have to squeeze past.

Onboarding new team members can drop productivity somewhat for existing coworkers, but the real challenge is helping the new folks meet your team’s pace. How you keep the training process and materials organized plays a significant role in how easy it is for your new hires to understand their training and get the ball rolling. Here are a few ways to use organization to help your new hires boost their productivity sooner rather than later:

Increasing Ease of Navigation

A new workplace is an intimidating mystery for new hires. There’s rarely time on the clock to just explore the office, filing cabinets, and shelving units. Instead, many workplaces rely on on-the-job navigation that combines the stress of not knowing where to go with the stress of needing to finish the job. This is especially true in restaurants, where a trip to the backroom can make a cashier simply disappear from the front end.

It’s much easier to navigate an unfamiliar area if you color-code your sections. Instead of looking for the box next to the paper clips, for example, you can check the red shelf or yellow drawer. These color cues limit panic and cut down on wasted time. Bright labels or stickers make it significantly easier for new hires to spot your workplace’s organization system. You can also provide printed guides around the workplace to help seniors and new hires alike navigate without needing to ask for help.

Color’s Relationship With Memory

Training often involves a lot of information all at once. For new hires, the first few weeks are a mix of memorization and trial and error. More often than not, this time also includes a million and one questions, many repeated over and over.

Color coding your workplace or work process can cut down on the repeat questions that interrupt everyone’s workflow, because bright colors make it easier for us to retain information. Our brain creates more effective associations and builds stronger memory bridges so that trainees are equipped to ask less and do more.

Finally, chaos is one thing that severely limits workplace productivity. Startups, restaurants, and even medical offices must keep everything tidy and organized to help their teams stay productive. After all, important documents and tools getting lost in the mess seriously slows everyone down. Even the anticipation of going on a scavenger hunt every time you want to complete a task is exhausting. Let’s explore a few ways to organize a workplace with productivity in mind:

Controlling the Chaos

It’s nearly impossible to sit down at a desk covered in messy papers and start being productive for the day. Whether it’s one employee’s station or the entire workplace, controlling visual chaos is key to letting team members breathe and focus on getting to work. It’s important to give every material, tool, or item a designated, labeled space. By providing labeled storage locations, you empower your team to organize their area and create a workspace that doesn’t drive them insane.

Preventing Losses

One productivity killer to watch out for is missing work. If a team member takes time off or calls in sick, the rest of the team needs to know where to look for their projects so they can pick up the torch and keep the workflow moving. Along with creating designated areas for items to limit chaos, keeping a clean, well-organized workplace ensures that nothing goes missing and slams everyone’s productivity to a halt.

At ChromaLabel, we carry the products you need to improve workplace productivity through organization. From colored dot stickers for effective filing to pre-printed zone labels for better storage organization, our color-coded office supplies make organization easier. Browse our wide variety of adhesive solutions. Contact us today to learn more about how our team can help make yours even stronger!