According to a new national survey conducted by Office Depot, achieving work-life balance tops the list of business priorities for the New Year. A majority of professionals surveyed (53 percent) identified improving their work-life balance as the leading business goal for 2008 and 39 percent believe getting organized will be the key to their success.
What specifically would business professionals like to realize from improved organization? Nearly a third (29 percent) aim to increase efficiency in order to have more time for other things, and another quarter (24 percent) hope to get rid of the paper piles that are on their desks.Beyond an uncomfortable distraction, chaos can be costly.
Sixty-five percent of respondents believe that lost time is the largest drawback to disorder, and more than half (54 percent) of those surveyed also state that disorganization causes them to forget key things such as deadlines and appointments. What may be most striking is that 13 percent believe disorganization costs them business opportunities.
"This survey reinforces the downside to disorder - an inherent loss of productivity," says Office Depot's organizing expert Monica Ricci. "By implementing a few clear-cut systems and utilizing available organizational tools, professionals can manage the task of getting organized and increase their productivity. They are likely to improve their work-life balance and rediscover a passion for what they do."
With more than 45 million people in the U.S. working at home or owning a home-based business, keeping a home-office organized and efficient was cited as a growing concern in the Office Depot survey. Of the more than half (56 percent) of the 2,500 survey respondents who have a home office, 20 percent do not believe their home office enables them to be as productive as they desire.
When asked what would make the home office better, respondents cited more space (47 percent), updated technology and office equipment (31 percent) and better layout and design (28 percent) as leading variables. The survey respondents also ranked the following tools as most useful in maintaining order:
1. To Do Lists / Notes
2. Calendars
3. Day Planners
Women found these tools to be significantly more effective than men who tend to rely more on technology items such as PDAs, WiFi-enabled computers and flash drives for organization. Although men and women differ on the types of organizational tools they prefer, Ricci recommends that every professional take advantage of the following solutions:
-- Prioritize With a Planner - Whether it's a paper- or electronic-based planner, Ricci suggests business people break projects into small pieces and work backwards from the end date to establish key milestones.
For those who opt for the paper planner, she encourages people to take advantage of the Mead Monthly/Weekly Appointment Book that allows you to keep track of monthly and weekly schedules in one book, giving a big-picture and detailed view of work so you stick to your project schedule.
-- Filing Efficiency - Prepare documents for quick retrieval by precisely labeling file folders and storage boxes with a hand-held electronic labeler. The Ativa Label Printer, available exclusively at Office Depot, allows professionals to quickly and neatly print up to three lines of text on a tape and has a 10-character; two-line display, for maximum readability.
When filing, use the Office Depot Secure Expanding File Folders. A new twist on an old product, these specially-designed file folders keep your papers safe with a unique top-locking tab design that will securely hold up to 60 sheets of paper.
-- Shred for Security - If papers are out of date or unnecessary, eliminate them, being mindful of preserving confidentiality. The Ativa line of Micro-Cut Shredders is ideal because its cross-cut shredder design chops documents, small paper clips, credit cards, CDs and DVDs into tiny, unusable pieces.
-- Back-Up for a Better Tomorrow - To ensure important data and presentations are not accidentally lost, Ricci stresses the importance of back-up solutions. At a minimum, she suggests traveling with a flash drive, like the Ativa 4GB flash drive, which holds as much as 160,000 sheets of paper.
She also encourages professionals - particularly those who conduct work at home - to invest in a hard drive such as the SimpleTech Portable Hard Drive that can store between 40GB and 1TB of data.
An online omnibus study was conducted by TNS NFO using a national panel of consumers from November 14th through the 19th. Twenty five hundred completes (representative of the U.S. household population 18+ on age, gender, geographic division, income, household size; household designation and market size) were received.
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