How Routine Cleaning Increases the Productivity of Your Business

How Routine Cleaning Increases the Productivity of Your Business

February 20, 2019

Are you looking for ways to boost productivity in your office space? There’s plenty of research indicating that office cleaning in Walla Walla County, WA can go a long way toward improving workforce productivity.

A Harvard University study focused on more than 100 undergraduate students who were divided into perfectly tidy work spaces and work spaces that were cluttered with papers, cups and other random items. After some time at those work stations, the students were taken to a different room to try solving a puzzle that was designed to be impossible to solve. The students who began in the tidy work area attempted the puzzle for 18.5 minutes on average before they gave up, versus just 11 minutes for the students who started in the cluttered work area, suggesting a messy work environment can undermine persistence in accomplishing tasks and decrease general productivity.

Productivity is an issue that’s always talked about in office spaces as well, and many of the issues that were evaluated in that Harvard study are present in offices, dirty and cluttered spaces being chief among them. Here’s a quick overview of what we know about how clean office spaces help improve productivity:

  • Less stress: Cluttered desks can result in a person trying to focus on too many things at once, which lowers their stress threshold. It’s easy to glance around at items piled up on a desk, for example, and become distracted by the thought that you need to get those items organized.
  • Focus: It stands to reason, then, that a clean working environment makes it easier for employees to focus, because they don’t have to worry about being distracted by those piled-up objects. Better focus and more concentration mean more work will get done.
  • Health: Clutter isn’t the only issue offices need to be concerned about—actual cleanliness can also be a concern. Unclean working environments can result in staff becoming ill and having to take sick leave and miss work. In fact, there are some estimates that indicate an average employee will lose nine work days a year to sickness. A cleaner workspace helps to cut down on the amount of time these employees will miss for health reasons.
  • Less wasted time: You’d be amazed at how much time can get lost by having to sort through piles of papers or supplies to find exactly what one needs in an office environment. By reducing clutter and getting your space clean and orderly, you’ll be able to cut down on a lot of this wasted time that can plague offices.
  • Better morale: Simply put, employees like working in a clean, tidy environment. They tend to be much happier than those who are subjected to untidy work environments every day. Employees who are happy in their place of employment are much more likely to be more productive.

For more information about how office cleaning in Walla Walla County, WA can boost productivity at your business or office, contact the team at Supreme Cleaning Services today.

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