Setting Up a Productive Office

April 13, 2006

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When we're talking about productivity, what we're really asking is does the layout and organization of your office equipment enable it to get the job done? To give you a simple productivity problem, a solar calculator won't do its job if you use it in a dark corner of your office. Getting productivity out of your equipment is a bit different from using equipment efficiently, which is more concerned with saving you time and money.

Frequently you must balance time and cost considerations against how they will affect your equipment's ability to function. For example, think about a fax machine. You can probably operate such a machine at a lower cost if you use a single phone line for both phone and fax transmissions. But if you need to send or receive faxes at the same time you're making phone calls, the fax machine won't be able to do its job. To use the fax productively in that situation, you may have to maintain a second phone line.

Ask yourself questions. Take the time to ask yourself a few questions about what you do and how your equipment helps you to do it. Some questions you should ask include:

Are you dealing with the public or is the office primarily for your private use?
Which pieces of equipment do you use most frequently to do your job?
How much electrical power and how many outlets does your equipment require?
Do you have a significant amount of paper to keep track of, or keep filed?
Do you need a large desk surface to do your work (for example, for drafting)?
Does your work require you to frequently consult reference manuals or other books?

Plan with the answers to those questions in mind. If you know that you must consult price catalogs regularly, don't put the bookshelf in which you store them in your attic to make room for a nice looking potted tree that you can't use to get the job done. If you do, you could be tempted to refrain from trudging upstairs to consult the catalogs and, instead, rely on your memory for the price of a dozen widgets — with disastrous results.

Consider how systems will work together. Remember what happened when you were trying to watch The Flintstones as a kid and your mom started to vacuum in the next room? The buzzing lines that filled your television screen demonstrated that two pieces of equipment may be useful by themselves but not work well together.

This problem is also evident in the example of the fax machine that is receiving an incoming transmission on the same telephone line that you need in order to make an important sales call.

System conflicts that should be avoided with careful planning include:

Power availability problems — consider the effect of supplemental heating and air conditioning units on power availability when the weather starts changing. Some equipment may also distort radio transmissions or cause static on a cordless phone.
Temperature discrepancies — be wary of placing equipment that generates heat (for example, a photocopier) or magnetic fields too close to computer disks and other sensitive equipment.
Lighting conditions — many people working on a computer terminal like things darker to minimize screen glare. The same darkness causes problems for both solar powered devices and your eyes, if you're trying to read. Arrange lights so that you can turn some off when you are working onscreen and turn others on when you are working at your desk.
Infrared system failures — there's much talk today about the wireless office. Some systems send data over the airwaves to a printer or fax machine in the corner. Will putting two of these machines in the same room cause a problem? Will such a machine interfere with a burglar alarm system? Plan accordingly.
Rolling office chairs and carpeting — they may generate static electricity harmful to computer components.
Noisy equipment — it can render the dictation tape you prepared for your transcriptionist — or worse, the phone message you left for an important client — unintelligible.