Staying organized often means saving money

As the country’s workers continue to multitask, companies may think they’re continuing to get more and more for their money as a result. While this is true to an extent, it’s not necessarily as cut and dried as it seems.

In general, the more people have on their plate, the more disorganized that plate is going to be. When looked at in that light, companies could be losing more money than they’d care to know.

So what’s a company to do for its disorganized workers? Unfortunately, it’s hard, if not impossible, to impose a mandate demanding employees be organized. However, there are steps they can take to make things go a little more smoothly.

Establish communications guidelines

Time lost on the phone or in e-mail correspondence can take a big chunk out of productivity. Some companies are requiring a phone log be kept for all calls. This helps workers stay organized because it’s easy to see what has and hasn’t been done.

When writing e-mails, workers should try to word things in definite terms, making the intent of the message as clear as possible. Again, this can seem simple, but workers send countless e-mails per day and busy workers might not recognize a message’s urgency or intent and could therefore put it in the stack of things to address later. That, needless to say, only makes things more disorganized.

In addition, mandate that inboxes and outboxes be cleared out (or at least have e-mail stored elsewhere) after a set amount of time. This will make it easier to find urgent messages when necessary, saving time and money in the process. Simply because it’s an electronic, and not a physical, mailbox doesn’t mean it cannot grow cluttered.

Set office guidelines

Cluttered desks are perhaps the biggest friend to disorganization. Employers can mandate a certain level of cleanliness in an office, limiting what can and can’t be on a desk. The less extraneous material on a desk, the less likely an employee is to be disorganized.

To combat lost documents (and subsequently lost and wasted time), set up each office or cubicle with a designated in- and outbox for documents. All documents that have yet to be seen should be placed in the inbox, while employees should be discouraged from placing documents they’ve already examined back on their desk.

Promote time management

Distribute planners to employees so they can better manage their time.

Planners can be the more traditional desktop choices, or modern electronic handheld versions. Either way, productivity often increases when workers can look at a list of things they have to accomplish, as they’ll spend less time thinking about what it is they need to get done and more time doing it.