Spring Cleaning for Your Business (Organizing Your Organization)

Spring is here, and it's about time! Once you've cleaned up your home and gone out for a few walks to take in some of that much overdue sunshine, it's a great idea to take a close look at the general condition of your business and kick up some dust in the process.

Here are just a few of many steps you can take to tidy things up around the office, physically and mentally.

1. Purge your inbox – An easy and fairly obvious way to start, but still valuable and a great way to scan through the past several months to make sure nothing has been lost in the shuffle, be it major or minor. No message shall be left unread!

2. Customer survey – While the majority of your time is already spent keeping the customer satisfied, it's definitely worthwhile, if not essential, to take a step back from your usual day to day communications to ask them how satisfied they truly are with you and your staff. Ask them to give it to you straight.

3. Employee survey – in turn, why not send some questions to your staff that will give you a clear picture of how they're feeling, and what they'd like to change if they were in charge. Reassure them that no harm will come to them for speaking candidly. This process might also give you some ideas on how to repurpose the roles of some staff members if they show an aptitude or interest in certain areas that may not be in their current job description.

4. Vet your Expenses – An informal audit of your own expense budget couldn't hurt. You might confirm that you're heading out for a hot lunch at the neighborhood pub a bit more frequently than you should be, or that you're paying for some online services that aren't really bringing any value to your day to day. For example, are you actually using all of that extra iCloud and/or Dropbox storage that you signed up for six months ago?

5. De-clutter – A big cleanup of everyone's desk or shelf space is always refreshing but it can go much deeper than that. Companies often hire consultants or experts who can weed out any operational clutter that may be hindering progress.

Happy cleaning and here's to a successful summer!