First Impressions really do Matter in Business Premises

Like your home, your office tends to become so familiar to you that you no longer ‘see’ it. Not with fresh eyes anyway. Just as you may have become accustomed to the bikes and the pram in the hall as you wiggle past them every morning and evening, the piles of mail in the corner of the kitchen, the laundry on the utility room floor, you don’t think ‘clutter’, you think ‘homeliness’.

Unfortunately, the same rule does not apply to a professional working environment. Anyone, from a courier delivering a parcel to a top visiting CEO who walks into your reception area and sees piles of old magazines, a water machine out of cups and a ratty old set of furniture, is going to think ‘this business is going nowhere’.

From boardroom to bathrooms

There is no point having a gleaming, state-of-the-art boardroom with cutting-edge technology and plate glass views over the London skyline if getting there involves a walk down a dingy corridor where the carpet has not been replaced in years. Likewise, when the meeting is over and the executives go for a call of nature, do you want them to find mounds of crumpled paper towel on the floor, some back-of-the-door graffiti and an unpleasant odour?

The overall look and feel of the entire building must be smart, clean, efficient and ergonomically exact. Glimpses through windows into side offices that are monuments to overwhelming desks of disorder set off alarm bells. OK, it’s good to be busy, but not so busy that they cannot tidy and keep order.

Better work environment = better morale

It is not only visitors who get sent bad signals when they appraise a messy office. The people who work there do too. If general sloppiness and untidiness is the norm, it allows the staff to disrespect the space they are in each day. This, in turn, has been proven to have a negative effect on productivity.

Of course, there will always be work piling up, emails to be answered, calls to be taken, unprocessed data from meetings to be dealt with, but it is harder to get on with these tasks from a messy desk. Distraction takes places when the eye is caught by an alternative report, an unanswered letter and an invite to a seminar. The simple answer to all this is, if you don’t need it – bin it. Dusty old files you never look in? Shred them. Only legal and contractual work needs to be archived for six years. The rest can go. It is all backed up on computer anyway. Encourage all staff to adopt this technique. Then stand back and see the bare bones of the office again.

Are you proud to welcome and show your clients in?

Because no matter how we try to deny it, we do judge a book by its cover and first impressions are hard to eradicate. If your office could do with uplift check out this great website for more information!

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