Staying Organised in the Office – Back to Work Tips!

Most of us are slowly beginning to get back into the swing of things after the Covid lockdown. Despite a few new rules and regulations in the workplace, we are finally starting to get back to normal and communicating with our colleagues face-to-face rather than via Zoom! 

At Virtual PA London, we are used to working remotely all of the time. However, we have a huge wealth of experience in staying organised and productive in an office environment. We want to help to ensure you have a smooth transition from working at home back to working in the office. 

In this article, we will be listing our top tips for staying organised in the office. These are easily achievable, but when you have a busy schedule, they can often be overlooked! Now, let’s get into it…

Tip 1.

Declutter

A great way to start is to physically clear your workspace of clutter and organise, organise, organise! 

Throw away or shred everything that you don’t need (there will probably be a lot of this if you haven’t been in the office for a while!). Take this one area at a time - start with your desk, then move to your drawers, etc. This will make the process far more manageable. 

In addition, you should probably have a clean! This may be policy anyway in your workplace due to the Covid pandemic, but dusting and cleaning the surfaces is probably a good idea anyway. 

Tip 2.

Establish work ‘zones’

You can implement different work zones - areas of your office where different types of work should take place. For example, your computer work will, of course, happen at your desk. You may have a separate area for filing or document work, and a separate area for discussing things with colleagues. 

This can help to boost productivity as you begin to associate these physical spaces with certain types of work - it can help you to really get into the zone!

Tip 3.

Revise your filing system

You will probably find that most files can be stored digitally. If so, you should spend some time organising your digital filing system to ensure that all documents are easy to locate.

As for physical paper files - consider whether these can be transferred to digital files. Sort through and shred anything you no longer need, whilst ensuring there are no duplicate files. Everything that you need to keep should then be organised into different folders.

Tip 4.

Don’t multitask!

One of the most important things when staying organised and productive is to not try and multitask. You should use a planner that clearly shows which tasks need to be done on which days, how long these tasks should take, and when they need to be completed by. Once you have your planner set in place for the week, you can then produce a to-do list from it. 

Organise your to-do list by priority and take it one task at a time. You should ensure your to-do list is digital - this way, as new tasks come in, you can easily add them to the list in the appropriate place, rather than just chucking them on the bottom. 

Tip 5.

Organise your email inbox

This is a super important one! We actually covered this in lots of detail in a previous article - we provide you with loads of handy tips and tricks to make the process easy and seamless. Click here to check it out.