A clean sweep for your office

By Jill Carlson

Do you spend too much time looking for things on your desk? Has it been months since you've seen the top of your desk? Are there boxes of old documents that you don't know what to do with? Do you have old computer and electronic equipment taking up valuable space? Is the dust so thick in your office that you can write your name in it? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, it's time for some intense spring cleaning and organizing.

"Like healthy eating habits and a regular exercise program, having an organized office and systems to assist with workflow can reduce stress and increase productivity," said Nancy Kruschke McKinney, president of Successful Organizing Solutions (S.O.S.). Kruschke McKinney has worked with more than 200 local businesses including G.W. Stolen Inc., Paragon Video and Stereo, CUNA Mutual, Alliant Energy and several branches of Madison libraries since starting S.O.S. in July 1999.

Too much paper

The average businessperson spends 28 minutes a day looking for lost pieces of information, according to statistics on the Franklin Covey Web site (www.franklincovey.com).

"The number one problem area for most businesses and individuals is paper. Paper comes in and tends to pile up. People have a difficult time keeping on top of the amount of paper and setting up systems to manage the paper as it comes in.

"The second is e-mail. This is almost worse than paper. People are starting to deal with mail easily, but are at a loss as to what to do with and how to deal with junk e-mail," Kruschke McKinney said.

Kruschke McKinney helps businesses set up filing systems to conquer the daily volume of paper. She works closely with business owners to determine systems that will work best for specific needs.

She suggests using the F.A.T. system for organizing papers. F.A.T. stands for File, Act or Toss. To start ridding your office of excess paper, pick up each piece of paper. If it is something to be saved, place it on the "to be filed" pile and then file it the same day. If the paper requires action, determine who needs to handle it and pass it along to that person. If you need to take the action and it will take only a couple minutes, do it now. If the project takes longer than two minutes, put it on your calendar. If the paper is junk mail, out of date or can be found elsewhere, toss it.

Katherine Stolen-Sime, president of G.W. Stolen in Olde Towne Office Park contacted S.O.S. about a year ago for help in organizing her office systems. "We had been going through a lot of changes moving various aspects of our business from paper to computer. Many of our processes no longer worked for us. No two days are alike in this industry -- it is very fast paced and a challenge to keep on top of so many details," Stolen-Sime said.

Kruschke McKinney helped Stolen-Sime with desk efficiency so that documents can be found quickly, which reduced Stolen-Sime's searching time from minutes to seconds.

A new filing system and a system to track incoming work helped the entire office avoid the "Now where did I put that?" search. Stolen-Sime said the systems also help her staff find the information they need when she is out of the office. She cited a significant improvement in internal communication, and the organization methods have given Stolen-Sime more time to focus on the daily running of her business.

Stolen-Sime highly recommends bringing someone in from the outside to help organize the office. "The focus is on how YOU function -- what is working for you and what isn't. It doesn't matter what type of industry you are in. Over time, we accumulate so much stuff and don't know what to do with it. Some of the daily things we do were effective 10 years ago but don't necessarily work well today. A professional organizer can help you figure it out.

"It's not about throwing things away. It's about organizing your physical space, your processes and in a sense your workday. Business owners and managers are too busy these days to spend lots of time trying to reorganize everything. A professional organizer can identify much quicker the what and how. Nancy's work here has made a significant difference. I just wish I had met her five years ago," Stolen-Sime said.

Cleaning the office can save money in addition to saving time. Kruschke McKinney worked with Town and Country Insurance Services in Blanchardville to help them purge and organize their offices. They had been in business more than 20 years and thought that they needed more office space and potentially storage space. "I told them not to rent storage space, that they had plenty of space, it only needed to be purged and set up to meet their needs," Kruschke McKinney said.

After 25 to 30 hours working with the staff onsite and additional time spent by the staff sorting and purging, three or four dumpsters full of papers, magazines, old forms and outdated information were removed from the office. The business owner went from being skeptical that anything could be done to being amazed at how quickly and easily it was done. "The time and money invested initially was definitely worth it," Kruschke McKinney added.

Each industry has specific guidelines for the length of time documents need to be stored. Health care, financial institutions, insurance agencies and credit card companies all work with volumes of documents that contain personal client data. Add in tax documents, employment records, payroll data and other records that are common in any business and you're looking at a lot of valuable space that is occupied by paper.

MTM International, headquartered in Verona, provides offsite record storage along with document imaging and document conversion services. MTM works with more than 1,500 public, private, and government organizations including more than 200 Madison-area businesses.

MTM follows records-management guidelines mandated by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), Check 21 (the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act), ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and Sarbanes-Oxley (federal regulation on financial practice and corporate governance). They review a company's records-management policies on an annual basis to ensure compliance regulations are being met and that document retention guidelines are up-to-date.

"Movement of documents through an organization, time spent performing low-value manual tasks such as physical filing and paper handling is significantly reduced, freeing resources to focus on value-added functions within the business," said Edward H. Modjeska, director of business development at MTM.

When the time comes to destroy confidential documents, the best method is shredding. While shredders can be purchased at office supply stores, large companies need a shredding option that will accommodate large volumes of paper. Shred-it is one of several Madison businesses that will come to your office to shred documents.

Mark Wieland, general manager of the Madison Shred-it franchise said that more than 500 police forces, 1,500 hospitals, 8,500 bank branches and 1,200 universities and colleges throughout the world use Shred-it to destroy documents.

Too much old technology

Old computer equipment and other electronics have a way of sticking around an office even after their usefulness has expired. Businesses can't put them out with the regular trash because communities don't generally recycle computers and electronics. Plus, if disposed of improperly, information on the hard drive could fall into the wrong hands. So what can a business do to get rid of old technology?

Cascade Asset Management is a full-service computer and technology retirement company that will haul away old computers and other electronics from businesses. Since Cascade opened in April 1999, they have collected more than 16.6 million pounds of old electronics including computer monitors, modems, printers, TVs, photocopiers and fax machines. The demand for Cascade's services required the business to open a new 32,000-square-foot facility off Highway 51 in September 2005.
 

Cascade processes equipment for resale, donation or recycling based on the business' request and contingent on the market demand for processed equipment. Cascade wipes clean hard drives, diskettes, data tapes and destroys all identification tags and markers on computer equipment. If a medium cannot be wiped clean, it is shredded at Cascade, which also provides businesses with an equipment disposition report summarizing how the equipment was processed.

Craig Fonzen, sales and outreach executive at Cascade, explained that the company has refurbished and resold or donated more than 741,000 monitors, computers and printers and kept more than 899,000 pounds of lead out of landfills. Cascade works with more than 500 businesses including American Family, Lands' End and Group Health Cooperative to recycle old computer systems.

Many businesses upgrade computer systems every three to five years and contact Cascade to haul away still usable computers. Two staff members at Cascade resell the equipment on eBay. Businesses earn a rebate based on a percentage of the revenue generated by the resale of their equipment. Cascade has paid more than $2.3 million in rebates to businesses from the sale of equipment.

Too much dirt

After you've cleared away all of the piles of paper and old computer equipment, it's time to get down to some heavy-duty cleaning. Wipe down the phones, clean off computer monitors with a computer-safe cleaner, clean the windows and dust off the shelves. And here's a cleaning step that many people forget: Have the carpet cleaned by a professional carpet cleaner. While vacuuming will pick up the debris, cleaning will get rid of the ground-in dirt, coffee stains and allergens that have taken up residence.

Stuart Seffern, owner of Madison Area Carpet Cleaning recommends the truck-mounted steam extraction method followed by a thorough rinse and drying extraction. "Just like a high efficiency washing machine, if done properly, there is considerably better cleaning, it is gentler on the item being cleaned, and better for your health and the environment," he said.
jilly@chorus.net

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