Having a clean office can boost your employees’ productivity and morale every day. How nice does that sound!?
Although it sounds nice on paper, it can be difficult to always keep the office clean and organized.
Everyone is busy, and a lot of time people are stressed, so it becomes the last thing people want to do.
Instead, they may feel rushed to get out of the office and then leave a cluttered mess.
So how can you ensure that the office stays organized and clean? Is there a way to incentivize employees to join in on the endeavor of keeping the office looking fresh?
Read these steps so you can improve the overall cleanliness of the office building!
Focus On Hygiene
Although you can convince staff to keep their area clean and tidy, it can be a bit harder to keep the office building actually sanitized up to standards.
This is not something you want to fall onto your employees’ laps either. Instead, you should consider hiring cleaning services or professionals to come in on a nightly or weekly basis to sanitize the office.
This would include cleaning the bathrooms, the office rooms, and anything else that may go overlooked on a given day with the office staff.
There are also consulting firms for industrial hygiene that can take your cleanliness to another level.
Whether you want to hire them for environmental concerns, to be the head of a project, or to train employees based on hazardous materials and overall safety, this can drastically improve the hygiene and sanitization of your office building as well.
Incentivize Staff To Tidy Up
If you are determined to keep your office clean and organized, you may want to start incentivizing staff.
This may look different for various employees and organizations, but is a great way to get everyone on board.
Here are a few different things to try:
- Have a recycling competition – the person who recycles the most over a week’s worth of time wins
- Have a tidy reward that you give out monthly for whoever kept their space the cleanest and tidiest
- Throw a party for the entire organization if everyone is pulling their weight for a month
Set Aside Organizing Days As An Office
As an office, it may be a fun event if you set aside time out of each week to get organized. This could be a couple of hours on a Friday after the last meeting.
Instead of going back to work, you may want to give staff a couple of hours to start organizing. This may look different every Friday but it could include:
- Going around the office to recycle any unnecessary papers from meeting rooms, offices, etc.
- Filing papers strategically away
- Picking up clutter from around the office
These are just a few ideas. However, you could have employees clean their area first and then assign and delegate tasks to the larger office.
For instance, once an employee is done organizing their area with files, papers, clutter, etc., they could then have a task such as restocking the coffee in the workroom or turning off all of the copy machines.
Assigning these tasks can help the entire office stay organized while also making the organizing go a bit faster.
Prioritize Staff
Although not the most straightforward way of keeping the office clean and organized, prioritizing staff’s well-being can improve the way staff act and think about the space.
For instance, if your staff are unhappy, they aren’t going to treat the space as well as they could.
When work is over, instead of spending time tidying the space and cleaning up after themselves, they will most likely choose to rush out of the building.
If they are happier in the workplace, they may choose to spend more time after hours to make sure they are set up for success the next day.
They will also feel more giving and helpful when they are in a better headspace.
This is a win-win for both them and the office as a whole!
Set Reminders Around the Office
Although everyone in the office is most likely an adult that knows about the importance of hygiene, it is crucial that this is reiterated to employees.
Putting reminders and signs around the office is one way to help set reminders.
For instance, in the bathroom, there can be a sign to remind employees to wash their hands.
You may want to set hand sanitizer dispensers around the office with a little sign that says employees should use it when they pass!
If you have a common workspace, you can set reminders there as well. For instance, if you use a coffee cup for coffee, you should wash it right away and set it out to dry.
If someone uses the toaster, they should clean up any crumbs around to keep pests and ants away.
Small steps like this can make a huge difference in the sanitary hygiene of the office space. It may even make staff a bit happier that the space is clean every time they walk into it!
Take These Steps to Keep Your Office Space Clean and Organized
It may feel like a lot of work to constantly keep your office space clean and organized.
However, it would be more work to let the office get dirty and unsanitary to then need to do a deep clean once per month. This will take more time and effort on everyone’s part.
Instead, taking small steps every single day with your employees can make a huge difference.
If you are ready to keep your office tidy, start implementing one of these steps at a time.
When it comes to getting your employees involved, have a conversation with them to get everyone on board!
You’d be surprised how easy everyone will jump on board when they know the why and how it can benefit them as well!
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