How A Clean Office Can Boost Productivity

March 26th, 2018

By David Smith, 10x Guest Writer

A consistently upkept working environment not only appeals to the senses, but also fuels greater productivity from staff and management.

Researchers at Harvard University conducted an experiment (named The Cluttered Desk Experiment) involving more than 100 undergrad students, who were divided into two groups. One group was brought into an immaculately tidy workspace, while the other was brought into an office with litter everywhere. The students were then taken to another room and given a puzzle that was unsolvable. The students who were exposed to the clean workspace attempted the puzzle for an average of 18.5 minutes, compared to just 11 minutes for the students in the littered workspace. The experiment concluded that an untidy environment poses a greater threat to a person’s sense of control and consequently harms their ability to self-regulate, which is why people in a clean working environment will be more persistent in completing the tasks assigned to them.

 

It’s not just that people get more work done in a tidy office, either. The quality of output is notably better than in an untidy space, as people’s focus is sharper. There is also far less time wasted on looking for documents in neatly organized offices than in messy workplaces. Even sick days are more rare in clean workplaces, and morale is likely to be higher.

It pays to keep your office or any working environment in a state of cleanliness so that staff and management get their best work done, in turn helping the company’s productivity and bank balance.

David Smith is a guest writer from Cleaning Services Group

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