Is wasted space draining your business of money?

Most businesses define their success by their assets. But at the same time, many a good company goes down because it does not handle “the space it has” appropriately. This may sound confusing, but the fact is that space – whether physical or virtual – is essential for effective business processes. Because it is largely invisible, too often the effect it has on overall process is not taken seriously enough.

If you tended to measure space in minutes and seconds and metres and centimetres as you should do, then it will soon become apparent how its overabundance can allow businesses to grow more easily, or how its scarcity can lead to risk. But it gets taken for granted. It is often only measured or taken stock of, when it is scarce or there is real room for growth.

This type of mindset prevents the astute manager from living in the moment and taking advantage of growth ideas at the right time and preventing clogs in the system.

Booking expensive external venues

You know when something is going wrong when your staff are booking expensive external venues for activities which are part of day to day processes instead of using internal resources. But maybe there is a reason for that. When space is mismanaged, that useful space goes unnoticed. This could be due to clutter of equipment, or documents that should be archived. It could be due to a bad scheduling system where cancelled meetings do not show up on staff diaries. Whatever it is, monitor how your real resources are being used and where possible, ensure real resources they do not just become static storage rooms.

Take advantage of the digital world

Making more use of the digital world is a great way to take advantage of old space. Staff may find they do not have to come to the office at all but can access documents from home, communicate with colleagues through video conferencing and get rid of all that cumbersome hard copy by putting it in the cloud.

Space utilisation policies

These kinds of mandates straight away bring the amount of space everyone is having to play with into focus. Procedures can be set around scheduling the use of meeting rooms, interview rooms and any room that may be used for training, or quiet work rooms. Once it is a policy it cannot be ignored.

The use of sensors

Do you know at any given time how your buildings are being used? How many staff do you have in at any one time? When is the busiest time? Is there a time when resources are under used? With this kind of information, you can re-channel when your staff is using resources and plan for flexibility in the future.

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