Research carried out by the office supplies company Office Depot established that roughly a fifth of American SMBs consider a lack of organisation within their workplace among the primary problems hindering their progress.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main reason small business offices become disorganised is that staff don’t feel they have enough time to manage their space effectively.
The study also made clear the potential importance of the issue, finding that over 90 per cent of SMBs consider an organized office to be a more productive environment than one in which chaos has become part of everyday life.
As part of the study, over a thousand relevant parties were quizzed on how they view the organisation in the office. A quarter of respondents said they at least attempt to tidy their desk every day, while just over a third said they do so roughly once a week.
In the UK and elsewhere, disorganised offices are being alleviated, at least to some extent among SMBs, by the increased use of serviced offices where many of the day-to-day concerns associated with occupying busy workspaces are taken care of.
Meanwhile, many self-employed and start-up companies take advantage of the flexibility offered by ‘on-demand’ workspaces, where occupancy can be arranged on short notice.
Indeed, a recent report from the Global Workspace Association (GWA) suggested that SMBs worldwide are steadily embracing the flexibility of serviced offices and other managed workspace solutions.