What is a clear desk policy?
A clear desk policy (CDP), or clean desk policy, is a company-wide initiative concerned with the state that employees leave their workspaces at the end of the day. Implemented for security reasons, the policy's goal is to limit the possibilities of external parties seeing sensitive documents and reduce the risk of information breaches.
With GDPR and the increase of hot desking, companies of all sizes are ensuring that they’re fully compliant with strict data security regulations. Broadly speaking, a clear desk policy requires all employees to remove paper from their workspace at the end of the day, ensuring they have a tidy desk before they leave. Sanctions for internal non-compliance can range from warnings to fines, and office managers or team supervisors are normally responsible for enforcement.
Confidential document shredding services and secure document storage services can help facilitate a clear desk policy by ensuring that sensitive paperwork is either stored correctly or properly destroyed. Below, we’ll touch on some of the benefits of a clear desk policy as well as provide you with some tips on how you can implement these processes into your organisation.
Benefits of a clear desk policy
A clear desk policy should be adopted because of the many benefits it can provide to your business.
1. Compliance with GDPR
The primary reason for creating a clear desk policy is the additional information security it creates. By ensuring that a tidy desk will have no sensitive documents left on display, external parties such as cleaners or building staff won’t have access to them out of hours.
Not only helpful for compliance with the UK’s Data Protection Act and the GDPR, but a clear desk policy can also be an important step towards obtaining additional accreditations, such as ISO 27001. For these accreditations, it’s important to show evidence of compliance across the company, not just at the top level. A well-designed clean desk policy does the job perfectly.
2. Reduction of waste
Another advantage is the reduction of waste. As we’ll explore in a later section, a clean desk policy naturally leads to fewer documents being printed and circulating around the office.
A clear desk policy also tends to require a more regulated way of disposing of unneeded documents, which means that it’s much easier to enforce company-wide recycling as the preferred method, whether that’s through your own paper bins or an external waste management company.
With the recent introduction of the Simpler Recycling legislation, having a streamlined process for commercial recycling has never been so important. This is where adopting a clean desk policy can play a key role in reducing paper waste and encouraging proper document disposal.
3. Save time and money
Employees can spend a lot of time searching for information. This can be reduced with a tidy and organised workspace. A clear desk policy will encourage employees to use digital versions of documents, significantly reducing your organisation's costs of paper, ink toner and printer maintenance.
For organisations that don’t yet have a digital document management process in place, document scanning services offer an easy and efficient starting point to improve information access, compliance, and overall productivity.
4. Reduce stress & make good impressions
When your employees are organised, they can spend more time concentrating on work rather than feeling overwhelmed because they can’t find the document they need.
A clean and tidy desk makes your business look efficient and presentable to anyone who decides to visit.
5. More professional
Aside from the compliance benefits, a clear desk policy can also make a workplace appear more professional. It provides an incentive for employees to keep a tidy desk at all times, preventing stacks of paper and other clutter from building up. This allows the business to make a better impression on clients and any other visitors who may take a look around.
6. Keep employee belongings safe
Working in an office, you can generally expect a large number of people to be passing through on a daily basis. This means any belongings left lying around may be moved, misplaced or mistakenly taken.
Implementing a clear desk policy reduces the risk of belongings disappearing and employees being unable to find important documents or expensive technology. It can also serve as a helpful reminder to employees who often forget their belongings after a long day of work.
7. Reduce Illness
Over the course of the day or working week, a desk space will inevitably become dirty through regular use, even if it looks spotless.
Keeping a tidy desk will ultimately promote a clean office with a reduced amount of germs. This can help to stop the spread of illness within the company and promote good hygiene.
8. Hot Desk Policy
With many organisations now adopting hot desking, a clear desk policy helps to maintain a tidy desk and no personal items on display. This allows employees to sit at any desk they choose, encouraging stronger collaboration and teamwork. This also maximises efficiency if employees are part-time or remote working, as desk space is not designated to any individual.
Implementing a clear desk policy
Implementing a clean desk policy across the company is undoubtedly difficult, but it’s achievable if done properly from the outset. The first stage is to get buy-in from all senior management; the policy has to be embraced from the top down if it’s going to get any traction with employees.
Once the specifics have been agreed upon, the policy should be written up and made available for any to reference should they need to. This could mean sending employees digital copies as well as putting written versions around the office or in communal areas.
It’s also important that there’s a clear enforcer for each part of the office. In a smaller environment, this could be a single office manager, but in larger workspaces, it’s likely that supervisors will have to be responsible for their team. These people will be responsible for checking that the workspace is tidy and for determining sanctions if necessary.
However the clear desk policy is communicated, it’s important that employees understand why it’s there. It’ll be much harder to get them on board if it seems like an arbitrary directive from on high. Emphasising the security and environmental benefits is a good way to appeal to the vast majority of the people affected, which will make the implementation process much easier.
Tips for individual desk decluttering
At the same time as releasing a full clear desk policy, employers could send round some tips for decluttering desks and incorporating the new requirements into daily routines without wasting any time.
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A simple organisational trick is to plan, as far as possible, what you’re going to need on your desk for the day when you first arrive. Planning helps employees to get the right files out of storage in one go, without having to make multiple trips to find more.
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It’s also important to provide adequate storage for other desk items, whether that’s boxes, trays or under-desk drawers. Doing so encourages employees to keep their workspaces tidier at all times, which in turn ensures that important documents don’t get lost or forgotten about at the end of the day.
The bottom line is that successfully implementing a clean desk policy is a team effort. It requires buy-in from senior management, whose role is then to make it as easy as possible for employees to stick to the policy across the entire company. Clear communication and thoughtful planning will help to ensure that the adoption process is as smooth as possible, which will allow you to start seeing the benefits of security, tidiness and waste reduction that much sooner.
Digital decluttering
It’s not just a tidy desk that makes the workplace run smoothly. Extending the clear desk policy to online platforms by encouraging employees to organise their files, folders, and emails can greatly enhance the efficiency and security of digital work. This can be especially useful for offices that require strong communication and collaboration when working, as the clear desk policy ensures all files are accessible and organised.
By using a web-based document management system and a standardised file-naming convention, you can ensure important files are not only easy to find but also stored securely.
Making decluttering easier for employees
Anything that you can do to make desk clearing and decluttering easier for your employees is going to help smooth over the adoption process for the new clean desk policy. An important step is providing dedicated storage space for documents that will be needed again, and guidance for how to dispose of waste paper.
If you lack the means for secure disposal within your own business, working with a document management company like the Shredall SDS Group is an excellent solution.
Shredall SDS Group offers extensive document management services, including on-site or off-site shredding services, document scanning, and secure document storage solutions, which can aid you in your clear desk policy efforts. Get in touch with our team today to learn how we can help.
