Anyone who has ever visited a company’s head office to find their office looking like it’s been annihilated by adverse weather conditions, will probably admit that their opinion of the company went down as a result.

In the same way that you can’t help but judge the author of an email littered with spelling and grammatical errors, you invariably judge a company whose employees’ work at desks piled with seemingly random papers.

It all comes back to that age old rule: your first impression counts – mess that up, and you’re facing an uphill battle that could’ve been easily avoidable. Whether we like to acknowledge it, a cluttered, untidy and – worst of all – unhygienic office is likely to scare off new clients. In fact, never mind about new clients, you want your current partners to hold you with high esteem, right? If so, undoubtedly the best way for that to happen is creating a clean, organised environment and sometimes the best way to do that is by hiring a professional office cleaning company.

As a business manager, the key is to shift the company’s attitude to creating clutter. This is significant for two reasons.

First is because the overall efficiency and productivity of a business can increase when employers spend just a minute a day less searching for documents etc. By itself a minute doesn’t sound like much of course, but accumulatively – over the space of weeks, months and years – it can make profound difference to your business’ growth.

Secondly, cleaning gets harder the worse mess becomes. It’s human nature to put off chores like cleaning until tomorrow. Problem is; tomorrow comes and the mess is worse, making tidying up even more of a chore. It’s a vicious (and ultimately messy) cycle!

So how can you sort this? In today’s office cleaning tips we will bring you a wise and environmentally friendly idea to help you reduce paper clutter in your office. The tidiest offices are generally those that simply have less material clutter to begin with. And how do they manage this? By bringing in a digital filing system…

It’s likely your business already has a network, and that’s a great starting point. Next comes a complete overhaul of the network’s file structure. This will take some time and careful consideration. A general rule-of-thumb is that an effective digital file system – when compartmentalized – reflects exactly how the business is organised and leaves room for future amendment and likely change.

Of course, there will always be a need for hard copies. However, to discourage printing unnecessary hard copies, some organisations have avoided giving each employee their own filing cabinets, and instead, opt for a communal filing station that of course means getting up, walking over and finding the appropriate file.

Although simple, making this change and gathering your troops for a inspiring talk about the reasons behind, is a sure fire way to instal greater productivity and the priceless benefit of your employees and clients enjoying spending time at the office – the value of which barely needs our endorsement!