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Downsizing: Workspace Saving Hacks From Australia’s Office Storage Experts

One of Australia’s leading business supplies firms, Premier Lockers launched a new-look website last month, re-introducing themselves to the world with a sleek new look. Specialising in locker manufacture and distribution, the company has a nationwide reputation for quality and consistency.

The new Premier Lockers website shows a greater emphasis on office space-saving technology like mobile shelving. Although often overlooked, technology of this kind can be invaluable for businesses, big and small. Prime amongst these mobile shelving products are Compactus, which are to Lockers what Apple are to smartphones. Innovative and easy to use, their ability to make the most of minimal amounts of storage space make them an essential addition to any workspace.

Long popular in libraries, museums, archives and even hospitals, the business world took a while to catch on to the potential of Compactus systems. Now however these systems are commonplace in offices right across Australia and around the world. They’re a key element of any business’ plan to minimize space-waste today.

Planning your own downsize? To celebrate their website relaunch, Premier Lockers shared their top workspace-saving hacks exclusively with TechGuide.

  1. Invest in some mobile shelving

Ok, we sense some major bias here. The guys at Premier Lockers recommend buying storage systems – who’d have thought? But there are significant gains to be had from spending some budget on mobile shelving; they can reclaim valuable floor space in smaller offices, make offices feel less cramped, and store important or confidential documents pretty securely. Hand-operated or electronic, with options to customise like special lighting, these units are always underrated…

  1. Style like a Start-up

One effective way to save space is redesigning your office. Start-up offices often look more like coffee shops than traditional businesses, but there’s a lesson to be learnt from this. Think about what’s really necessary for your business and strip away the excess. Does everyone need a desk if you have comfy seating and break-out spaces instead? How many meeting or conferences rooms do you really need for your small business of just a handful of employees?

  1. Standing room only

Another hallmark space-saving feature from the Start-up world is the standing desk. Much more compact than traditional desks – which have a tendency to attract needless clutter – the standing desks are a good option for offices with transient atmospheres; flexible working hours, lots of coming and going into meetings, that sort of thing. Ok, you might not want to be on your feet all day, but having a combination of sitting and standing spots allows people to choose and to move around a bit – which is much healthier too. Standing desks take the ‘hot desk’ principle (where desks don’t have one specific owner) and runs with it.

  1. Plan a Library-style space

Suffering from open-plan office blues but unable to afford costly reconstruction works or a relocation? Consider partitioning your office space differently. Instead of building walls, create partitions using shelves instead of screens, cabinets instead of walls. Creating a Library-style space is a surprisingly effective antidote to the open-plan office problem of constant noise – instead of feeling packed in together like battery hens, employees naturally feel calmer and, crucially, stay quieter too.

  1. Go Paperless

You’ve got to be really behind the times if you’re still printing everything, right? The vast majority of businesses and organizations have drastically reduced the amount of paper they’re using in the past 10 years, but haven’t managed to go totally paperless yet. Aside from the obvious environmental benefits, going paperless has its advantages for the overall office environment too. No big, noisy printing units. No bulky filing cabinets.  A lot less desk clutter. Using shared folder systems like Dropbox and having a strict no-paper policy might cause a small uproar from the office old guard, but it’ll be worth it in the long run!