Clean desk policy – make sure your office is properly equipped

Clean desk policy – make sure your office is well equipped

Tidiness in the workplace is extremely important for many reasons – it promotes concentration, allows you to find the documents or accessories you need more quickly, and allows you to work freely with paper contracts, calculations or sketches. However, tidiness in the workplace is also important for another reason – and that is the clean desk policy.

Clean desk policy – what is it and why is it important?

Every company must take certain measures to ensure that employees protect their personal data. Some choose to introduce a so-called clean desk policy for this purpose. This is a set of rules to be followed by the company’s employees, i.e. no documents (or data carriers such as memory sticks) should be placed on their desks that are not currently in use. This applies mainly to documents containing personal data and confidential information. A clean desk policy helps prevent individual information from getting into the hands of unauthorised people – including, for example, the company’s customers, but also other employees who should not have access to parts of the data.

A clean desk policy is particularly worth introducing in companies with reception or secretarial offices – this is usually where a significant proportion of documents are collected, as well as, for example, in archives or accounting offices. Be aware, by the way, that a clean desk policy can be combined with a clean printer or clean shredder policy.

So how do you keep your office tidy and what office accessories are useful for this?

Office furnishings: office supplies to help keep things tidy and implement a clean desk policy

When it comes to office supplies that will make it easier to keep your desk tidy, the first place to look is definitely in the filing and filing category. RAJA binders – especially the coloured ones – will help to properly label the different categories of documents. This way, the temptation to leave documents on the desk instead of clipping them straight into a binder will be significantly reduced. Office equipment should also include folders in which slightly smaller documents can be stored. Colour-coded dividers will also come in handy to further divide documents in binders.

Small notebooks and folders can be stored in drawers, thicker binders in cupboards and binders on shelves in bookcases. When it comes to the secrets of the power of organisation, however, there is more.

Document filing – the way to create extra space

Not all documents are useful in day-to-day work – some are kept, for example, because of a statutory obligation imposed on businesses. Document archiving allows documents to be stored in such a way that the desired information can be easily accessed at any time.

Principles of document filing

It is a good idea to keep archived documents in RAJA Archive Boxes. The boxes can in turn be placed in the handy RAJA Filing Box. In order to know what is in each such box, you can stick a card on the side with a general information (e.g. “Employee contracts 2020”).

When it comes to filing rules, most entrepreneurs choose to file by date. In the most inaccessible places (e.g. at the very top of a bookcase or at the end of a bookcase), binders, folders and boxes containing documents from the most distant years are then placed. Another technique may be to divide them into categories (e.g. contracts, invoices, etc.). Accounting documents are most often stored in this way.

Document shredding with a document shredder – the office equipment you need to keep your office tidy

It should also not be forgotten that not only does regular filing and archiving of some of the documents contribute to keeping the office tidy, but also – document shredding. It is therefore necessary to have the right equipment for the office, i.e. a shredder. Thanks to the shredder, you can easily dispose of paper which will no longer be used and which does not need to be archived. At the same time, the use of a shredder makes it possible to protect personal data more effectively – it is impossible for any person to access the content of destroyed documents, including – confidential data.

Therefore, when furnishing an office, do not forget to equip it with the necessary materials and equipment (cabinets, shelves, printer, shredder). It is also advisable to establish rules for filing and storing documents – so that all employees do so according to a single pattern. Entrepreneurs who additionally decide to introduce a clean desk policy should develop separate guidelines and allow employees to familiarise themselves with the new guidelines.