How can you fix that?
The business world does not take prisoners. Success requires focus, determination and hard work. It is impossible to reach the pinnacle of the business world without staying focused on your aim. That being said, having a one-track mind can cause problems to appeal in your blind spot. If your focus is solely on one particular thing, you might discover that your road to success is filled with barriers and challenges that you created. Ensuring you have a clean workspace is not something that most people see as a priority. This is because there are always customers to create, stakeholders to make happy and revenue to make. The moment you have numerous tasks to do, cleaning up some dust can pale insignificance.
However, failure to ensure a clean working environment could in reality harm your business and the goals you want to achieve. A tidy and clean workspace doesn’t just look nice, it also has a plethora of benefits which your company can enjoy, such as a successful and powerful working environment. While it might appear to be simply rhetoric, research has shown that a healthier, cleaner office is great for productivity.
How bad cleanliness affects your business
There are a number of extremely particular detrimental factors which poor cleanliness can affect performance and results. Thankfully, these are very seamless to recognise, and once you are able to identify the markers, you are on the first step to changing or resolving them.
Below are the issues:
- An under-strengthened external impression: this is the impression you offer up to those around you, such as customers, investors, and partners. This impression plays an important role in the way they conduct business with you. These external parties are interested in knowing if you are the correct brand and the right people to do business with. A workspace’s cleanliness directly influences the perception people have of your business’s professionalism. An unclean environment doesn’t provide the correct signals that invite trust, which are control, care and quality.
Workspace mindset: research has provided evidence that a workspace mindset has an important influence on performance. The way we view our working environment influences how we work and operate in it. An unclean workspace fails at projecting the idea and philosophy of professionalism and focus. What it does however portray is a very casual environment. Your environment can influence your mindset and that of your employees, thereby impacting how you carry out tasks.- The clutter effect: clutter can be extremely problematic due to two reasons. First of all, it can hinder any standard working practices, by hiding or misplacing pertinent documents, which then leads to time being wasted while searching for the pertinent documents. It could also cause a psychological effect to occur. Physical clutter typically leads to mental clutter, which then causes problems with thought processes and concentration. These two issues can cause inefficient work practices to occur.
- Wellness and health: poor cleanliness, unsurprisingly can be detrimental to workplace health. The build-up of elements such as mildew, dust, bacteria or mould spores can result in an environment that can create medical issues such as respiratory issues. Ensuring that your workplace is clean is imperative as it encourages the improved health of everyone in that space. It also reduces the likelihood of performance drips and sick leave due to poor health.
- Workplace happiness: it has been proven that when a worker is unhappy, that worker becomes less effective at their duties. They are also less likely to hang around. There are numerous things that can affect worker happiness. These things are usually out of your control, however, cleanliness is and should be something that you can control, as it has a real impact. Most people are unhappy at dirty spaces, both at work and at home. Ensuring that your workplace is kept clean and you are able to influence your staff’s happiness. While this might seem to be something small, however, a pile of putrid garbage mounting up, for example, can be something that frustrated your workers and gets them out the door.
Workspace mindset: Are there steps I can take to ensure my business improves its cleanliness?
Recognising the imperative issues which you might encounter in regards to workplace cleanliness is just one side of the coin, the other is resolution. Once you can fully comprehend just how severe the problem is, you have to take steps to ensure that it doesn’t affect you. Just like the numerous things life consists of, success is based on the ability to divide and conquer. Your processes should be split into immediate aims and long-term goals. Simply engaging in a particular action is not going to work. It is imperative that one thinks bigger.
Short-term solutions
First, perform a complete inspection of your work environment. Locate any weaknesses that need to be addressed. These could be ranging from cluttered and messy desks to an accumulation of moulds and dust. Then clean the environment once you have recognized it. Ensure that you perform decluttering and general tidying. It could be quite a labour-intensive tasks, however, it is one that is simple. You could also enlist the help of a professional if you do not have the time or the cleaning requires a bit more than you can give it.
Long-term strategy
Cleaning is not about simply cleaning up one time, rather, it is something that requires dedication and vigilance. You can create cleaning schedules which should be maintained, or enlist the regular visits from professional cleaners to ensure that your office remains in tiptop shape. Apart from keeping a schedule, you have to remain aware that need issues may arise in other areas.
Being able to comprehend just how important having a clean workspace is and how to react to any problems you might face is integral in having a business practice that is not only successful but also promotes improved results across the board in numerous aspects of operations.
