Guide to successfully manage a growing office

1. Declutter your office space

Clutter not only looks messy, but hurts productivity. If nobody knows where anything is, finding even the most basic things can be a time consuming challenge. This problem gets worse as your office gets more people, especially if you’re fitting them into the same space.

To really declutter your office space, consider going paperless. By going paperless, not only does it save you money and office space, but all your documents are secure and easily accessible on the cloud, making it easier to find the documents you need quickly. To go paperless, consider what new technology you need and create an action plan to transition your team, we have created our own guide to help offices go paperless.

2. Keep on top of your inboxes

Your office space isn’t the only thing you should declutter, a cluttered inbox makes it harder to identify important emails, which can lead to critical communication slipping through the cracks. To counter this, consider setting up email filters to automate your team’s inbox management. Email filters are available with most major mail apps, such as Gmail and Outlook. With email filters, you can automatically forward emails, move them to a folder, send a response, or mark them as spam so your team spends less time managing their inbox.

3. Promote effective communication

Effective communication becomes increasingly critical as your office grows. Every person in your office should know how to get in touch with each other, and who they need to contact for what matter. Daily standups are also a good way to get communication flowing for your office, daily standups are typically short morning meets done in teams where each member communicates what they’re working on and any challenges they’re currently facing. By implementing daily standups, it gives your team a chance to communicate any trouble they’re having, look for a solution, or ask for help.

4. Automate or simplify repeated tasks

As an office grows larger, inefficiencies with regular tasks become more and more cumbersome, but this also provides the opportunity to look at automation or simplification for your repeated task. Here are some processes your office may regularly do that could be improved:

• Managing visitor sign-ins with a book on the front-desk.
• Filling out paper forms with a pen, then transcribing them on the computer later.
• Adding new email leads into a spreadsheet.
• Sending overdue invoice reminders by email or letter.
• Ordering new office supplies.

All of these processes can be automated or simplified in some way, consider the following options for the same business processes:

• Use a tool like Locale Central to log details of visitors using a tablet on the front desk, allowing for faster data-entry and easier management.
• Use a tool like Locale Central to enter data on the web or with your mobile device using a digital, which is then automatically captured on the cloud ready to export or manage in one central place.
• Use a tool like Zapier to save new emails that match a certain criteria automatically into a Google spreadsheet.
• Use a tool like Xero to automatically send overdue invoice notices by email.
• Use subscription services to automatically order and receive new office supplies.