[Ilona]

How many of you have binders in your office that you have not opened in years? Guilty. Stacks of unused materials lying around? Guilty.

It’s that time of the year in business, at least in ours, when the fiscal year winds down and we painstakingly prepare budgets, forecasts, and goals for the upcoming year. Oftentimes, a critical component of the planning process is unfortunately overlooked, but we rarely seem to even notice. It’s almost as though we’ve become so accustomed to seeing the same environment every day, that we’ve simply turned a blind eye.

Recently, our CEO approached me about launching a campaign to refocus and refresh our environment for the upcoming year. His idea included reorganizing our surroundings and rethinking our business processes, as well as re-evaluating the way we motivate ourselves and each other. So we’re calling the program “Make ILD Shine in ‘09”.

As we started to fine tune it, and looked at our professional surroundings, it became blatantly obvious that with a ‘fresh’ set of eyes, we did not appear to be the $100 million company that we are today (and growing). The images on the walls and whiteboards don’t adequately reflect who we are and what we do. Much of the corporate image exhibits a business we sold nearly 5 years ago, plus stacks of boxes, folders and binders (guilty, guilty, guilty), and even unused or ‘underused’ furniture. Are we really using our space in the most efficient way? And more importantly, does our image reflect the strength of the company that we are? Perhaps, we’ve been so focused on growth that we simply lost sight of how we got here? Well, it sounds good, anyway.

With the CEO’s support, we put together a program that includes rules, teams, budget, and prizes for the 1st and 2nd place teams. Here’s how it works:

1 - Establish a Theme

· Express the depth of our team and our team’s commitment to our customers
· Demonstrate a professional and goal oriented environment
· Illustrate the professional successes of our company and each other
· Display common goals (charts and graphs) and publically track progress towards those goals
· Motivate and inspire!

2 – Establish Teams and Rules

· Set a start and end date
· Create 4 teams across our 5 offices, based on business and location
· Each designated division will select a “Captain” who will then determine, based on that location’s needs, the specific goals (i.e., customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, organization)
· Committee meetings must be kept to a maximum of 2 one hour meetings per week and individual time spent on reorganizing should be at the discretion of the supervisor
· Each team must take before and after photos and provide to members who are excluded from the contest
· Upon conclusion of contest, the executive team will visit each office to judge improvements

3- Set an equal budget for each team

· The funds can be used for any improvements that the division/location would like to make (furniture, furnishings, framed charts, awards, etc.)

We launched the “Make ILD Shine in ‘09” program on August 11th and the program concludes at the end of our fiscal year on September 30th, after which our executives will be judging which teams have made the most drastic improvements and which teams win the prize. A group for our company has been established on OfficeArrow, as a place to communicate, share ideas, or take a jab or two at the competition. Plus, it will be a place where we can track our progress.


Has anyone done something similar to this at their company?
Do you have some advice you can share with our teams?
What kinds of cost effective things can we do to make a difference in our work environment?

[Jodith]

One thing you can do that costs absolutely nothing is develop a records archive policy. This should cover what records should be archived, how many copies need to be kept, when they should be destroyed, and should include yearly reminders to everyone to archive or destroy records they no longer need at their fingertips. When I went through our offices recently, I found binder after binder of CQI manuals for a program that we don't even have anymore. And hadn't used in over 3 years. We determined that we should keep on copy of each manual and destroy the rest.

[Ilona]

That's a great idea, Jodith. We've discussed scanning things that we may need at a future date (so we have a copy) and shredding or recycling the rest, but making sure we abide by our records retention policy is a good point.

Someone also suggested the idea of adding all "roladex" contacts into "Outlook Contacts".

Any other recommendations?

[Jodith]

Scanning records is a great idea. Just make sure that you have the scanned files titled and organized in a way to make them easy to find.

Another idea is to have a central records archive room, so that all records are in one place and not filling up people's offices and getting in the way. You can get some record storage racks relatively inexpensively.

The hardest part is getting some people to actually part with files and records *laughs*. Maybe you can have a contest of some kind, with a prize for the person who divests their office of the most paper?

[Ilona]

Yet another great idea, Jodith! Thanks for your feedback. We've asked each office to take before pictures and it seems most of the teams are having a good laugh. I really like the idea of a prize for the person who rids the most paper, or perhaps the person who makes the greatest improvement overall.

All other ideas are welcome. Please share.

[donbartemus]

This idea caused me to look at my office. I almost live there so I have not looked at it for awhile. Whoa. Must revitalize. Now.