OFFICE TIDYING? WHAT AN IDEA!

Decidedly, in terms of world day we will have seen everything! So here comes the 21st of March, the world day of … office storage (if, if … it exists!).

So, of course, the creation of a world day to tidy your desk is perhaps (certainly) exaggerated, but it remains a good idea, as long as it is not limited to office storage alone.

A few figures about desk tidying

• 12% is the time spent at work over a lifetime
• 5 years is the time you spend sitting in front of your desk without getting up.
• 60% of employees around the world eat at their desks.
• 34% of French people do not have a tidy office
• 66% of French people need a tidy office to be efficient.
• 39% of French people tidy their office once a week

*Figures from a survey conducted by ManoMano from March 6 to 15, 2017.

3 Good reasons to tidy up your desk …or not

Recycling

A lot of tidying up is done by vacuum.

According to the ADEME, office jobs generate 850,000 tons / year of paper waste. Enough to clutter up our archive boxes and waste paper baskets.

If we add to that the amount of other waste produced by an employee (soda cans, water bottles and other salad tins) the figure per employee per year rises to 130 kg!

So the day of tidying up could turn into a day of recycling in the company.

All the more so as a regulatory obligation and two European directives require companies to recycle the office paper and waste electrical and electronic equipment they use.

Healthcare

When we say tidy, we also mean clean. When we know that 60% of employees eat at their desks and that we spend 12% of our lives at work … we have to wonder about the impact this can have on our health (and we are not talking about well-being at work).

The winter of 2017-2018 has seen a number of epidemics, between flu, gastro and other colds, we have all been in more or less direct contact with these viruses and other bacteria. In the office in particular.

The first thing you touch in the morning when you arrive at your workplace is the doorknob, which is, therefore, the first outbreak of bacteria at work.

Then you settle down at your office and, even if the cleaning company came by the day before, this does not prevent the development of certain germs.

Nibbling or lunch on your desk, chewing your pencils or pens, manipulating your mouse and typing on the keyboard … it seems harmless and yet …

Have you thought about the crumbs embedded between the keys of your keyboard, about the fact that you touch your mouse all day long but perhaps without having washed your hands, about your chewed-up pencil (and therefore exposed to your saliva) that is stored on your keyboard waiting for you to reapply it the next day, or about your phone that you might share with a colleague and stick to your ear and cheek (think about makeup ladies)?

Not very ragouting, is it?

So on March 21st, we take advantage of it … we clean our equipment (and we note to do it at least once a week, no need to wait for spring!) with adapted products: special wipes for screens, disinfectants for keyboard and mouse, dusting air bombs to chase away what is lodged between the keys of your keyboard … and we also think about the door!

The efficiency

Tidy your office to be efficient, more productive? Not necessarily. On this point everything is relative. This is what Albert Einstein pointed out: “If the view of a cluttered office evokes a cluttered mind, then what about the view of an empty office?

According to scientists at the University of Minesota*, an office in a bazaar encourages creativity and innovation.

*https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/tidy-desk-or-messy-desk-each-has-its-benefits.html

In these conditions one can wonder about the interest of the day of tidying up. In the end, its justification lies more in recycling and cleaning than anything else.