8 Ways to Boost Office Productivity with Whiteboards
- 21 Oct 2020
8 Ways to Boost Office Productivity with Whiteboards
Developed in the 1960s, but not widely adopted until the early 90s, the humble whiteboard took a little time to catch on. Possibly due to the 'radical' nature of drawing on a board with a pen instead of chalk, or potentially because early whiteboards were very difficult to clean.
Modern versions of the whiteboard are commonplace in the workplace (and much easier to clean), but the potential of these pieces of 'office furniture' is often overlooked and rarely leveraged to its full potential.
In this article, we give you 8 great ways that you can use whiteboards to boost productivity in your office.
1: Set a Clear Vision
Teams with a shared sense of vision do better. It’s a simple fact.
By giving your team a vision that they buy into, you ensure that all efforts are focused on achieving that ultimate goal. Some of the biggest and best businesses in history have been underpinned by a common vision:
“Our vision is to create a better everyday life for many people.” – IKEA
“Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. (*If you have a body, you are an athlete.)” – NIKE
“Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” – Patagonia
…the list goes on.
Creating a vision gives businesses a unique motivational tool, easily being able to explain to each employee how their contribution matters and counts towards business success. A good vision should be simple to understand, easy to work towards and communicated.
As whiteboards are often centre stage in an office, try using yours to write down your vision statement for everyone to see. Not only will this work as a consistent reminder to employees, but it is also an obvious way to communicate what you are trying to achieve to anyone who visits your office, whether a customer, supplier or any other stakeholder.
2: Monitoring Progress
The flexible nature of whiteboards makes them the perfect tool for monitoring and updating progress regularly.
For example, your business will likely have goals that they need to achieve on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. These goals may well follow the SMART format and therefore have a measurable element which can be tracked and updated via a whiteboard.
A sales team may use a whiteboard to track their monthly sales in comparison to their monthly target. Doing this ensures that everyone remains fully aware of what progress is being made and makes it much more difficult to lose track of what has and what still needs to be done. In the case of sales teams, if individual goal and targets are laid out, this can appeal to peoples competitive nature.
3: Communicate Key Information
Every business has key information that needs to be communicated regularly. This may include anything from departmental updates to important upcoming dates such as project or proposal deadlines.
Hiding this important information in physical or digital files can be a sure-fire way for people to forget, lose or ignore it. Using your whiteboard to communicate these key details is a good way to ensure that it is always apparent, as well as making it easier to keep relevant and up to date.
4: Create Calendars
Using your whiteboard to create schedules and calendars can be a great exercise in team environments. Not only does this make it easy for people to see what is going on and when, but it also allows for the collective updating of key dates and milestones simply.
This is particularly important in teams that are working on fast-paced projects that need to be consistently updated.
Read more: How to Turn Your Whiteboard into the Ultimate Planner
5: Have Fun
Some modern offices have gotten into a habit of constantly trying to outdo each other with ‘fun things to do’. Table football, ping pong tables, games consoles and even in-office slides are just a few that are boasted by some companies.
The humble and affordable whiteboard is not usually seen as a tool for fun…but it certainly can be. Whiteboards offer a blank slate which can offer hours of entertainment and relief from laborious work for those creative enough to see its potential.
Just a few ideas we have seen include:
- Team vs team nought and crosses.
- Weekly drawing competitions.
- Sweepstakes.
- Hangman with industry-appropriate words.
6: Use at Team Meetings
One of the most common reasons people use whiteboards is also still one of the best. These flexible tools can be used to great effect to promote interaction and make rapid changes during team meetings.
The benefits of using a whiteboard in meetings cannot be understated. This is especially true when you are trying to build on good ideas from your team.
Read more: The best made plans are on a whiteboard
7: Interactive Presentations
Complementing a digital presentation with the use of a whiteboard can be a good way to help you explain complex ideas and information.
However well you may have planned your presentation, the information is static and difficult to change in reaction to immediate feedback gathered from the room. A whiteboard offers you a blank canvas to build an explanation based specifically on who you are presenting to and the question they ask.
8: Leave Messages
Messy desks and light drafts might not seem like an issue until suddenly you cannot find that very important phone message someone left you. Using a whiteboard helps keep important messages in one places whilst simultaneously acting as a constant reminder that the message needs to be acted on.
This doesn’t just have to be phone messages, but your whiteboard can act as a live message board in your office, letting people notify you of important information if you are out of office or preoccupied.
If you are using your office whiteboard for just one purpose you are missing out on some huge potential benefits. Using your current or installing multiple whiteboards in your office can be a great way to seriously increase productivity and offer your employees the tools they need to achieve success.
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