Window looking out at a spring garden - Scan Film or Store - The annual office spring clean - how to get everyone involved

Ahhh spring. The mornings are lighter. The daffodils are out. The temperature has crept just a fraction above “brass monkeys” – for the most part anyway. And with the advent of spring comes that great British tradition – the annual office spring clean.

Now you may or may not be the sort of person who finds this sort of thing fun (what do you mean no one finds it fun??) but the truth is that offices can very quickly get cluttered. And we all know that a cluttered office is not a great environment for a happy and productive team.

That’s why our document storage and document scanning services are so popular. People may not like tidying but they do like things being tidy.

Anyway, we’re not here to argue the case for spring cleans. The point is that if getting organised is on your to do list then we’re here to inject a little levity into the process – and help get everyone else involved so you’re not left to slog through it on your own.

Hide stuff people want

This one is super simple. Just hide stuff people want in the messiest places in the office. You might hide Easter eggs. You might hide booze. You might hide an important report that’s due to be delivered to a very big client first thing tomorrow morning.

The point is that as people dig through long forgotten drawers and filing cabinets, they’ll be able to ditch the trash along the way. Nothing like a little incentive to get the team moving, right? 

Deploy gamification tactics

Yes, that is a word, promise. Gamification is the process of making boring stuff slightly less boring by calling it a game. Parents have been using this technique for millenia (“Open your mouth for the spinach choo-choo train!”) but the business world has only cottoned onto it relatively recently.

Gamification often involves creating an actual computer game with work stuff crowbarred into it but there’s no reason why it can’t work on a low tech scale. Create a list of tasks – taking down out-of-date flyers from Barbara’s last three cake sales, fishing the stapler out from behind the cupboard where Bob chucked it that time he was trying to juggle at the Christmas party – and assign each with a value. Whoever gets the most points by the end of the day wins a prize.

Threaten to burn everything

This might feel a little extreme but if you’re really at the end of yourself, you might want to try shock tactics. We wouldn’t recommend going as far as actually standing in front of the archive room with a lit match, but giving people a deadline and letting them know what you intend to do should they fail to meet it could be the motivating factor that’s needed.

The same goes for the fridge. Don’t worry about sifting through to see what’s still in date and what has grown a layer of mould that could supply a small pharmaceuticals firm for the next few months. Simply make a rule that every Monday morning / Friday evening you’ll be emptying the contents into the bin and you’ll soon find people are taking their gross tupperware containers home with them.

Get them to pay for professionals

Now here’s a thought. What if your team didn’t have to do it? What if you could get the professionals in? You can just hear them breathing a sigh of relief, right? Well if they want professionals, they can pay for professionals. Out of their own pockets, out of their departmental budgets, out of the funds from Barbara’s endless cake sales – whatever it takes.

Bring in the Scan Film or Store team to box up your archived documents and pop them in our purpose built storage unit in Bridgwater where it won’t all be getting under your feet. Or have us scan it all so you can store it digitally in the cloud where it won’t be taking up any physical room at all. Then get a cleaner in to give the place a good going over (we don’t do this bit, I’m afraid).

So, which one do you think will work best on your lot? If you think getting some document storage and scanning support could be helpful, give us a ring and we’ll talk you through it. We can also help with secure document and data destruction if you should unearth anything that needs to be wiped from existence.

You don’t have to take our word for it – have a read of our case studies from companies we have helped already.