Time to Feng Shui Your Real Estate Office
If tough economic times are affecting your realty business and leaving you feeling helpless and stuck, you may want to consider trying something unorthodox to attract new business. One of the ways you can do this is by improving the atmosphere in your office in order to make it more conducive to successful business dealings.
Applying feng shui principles to your real estate office may seem like an odd idea, but the practice not only improves the aesthetic of a space, but it also enhances the positive vibrations in a room. People enjoy being in a room where the energy or ‘chi’ is allowed to flow freely. If you correct the energy deficiencies in your office, you and your staff will feel more alert, creative, and confident. In addition, customers will be drawn to your office and its positive atmosphere.
In order to reduce negative energy and replace it with beneficial vibes, the first thing you need to do is to take a look at the layout of the office.
Desks should be placed so that employee’s backs face the walls. Walls act as support and protection, and can help build your team up. If you face the wall, you are left vulnerable to people sneaking up behind you (intentionally or unintentionally). This leaves you on guard and jumpy, particularly when you’re concentrating hard on a difficult task.
Facing a wall also limits your vision and acts as a barrier to success. This can be seen as a symbol for your entire career –that you’ve hit a wall, and there’s nowhere for you to go. If you aren’t able to move your desk so that you’re facing something other than a wall, hang up pictures that make you feel good. Paintings or photographs that show paths or waterways are particularly helpful. They allow your mind to see the future ahead of you, and remind you that there’s more waiting for you out in the world, with new opportunities for success around every corner.
You also want to make sure that desks in the office face the doorway, if at all possible. There are a few reasons for this, including the idea that you can be hit with negative energy called “poison arrows” if the door is behind you. You also want to face the door so you can greet (both literally and energetically) clients as they walk in. If they see your back turned to them, they will feel unwelcome and unimportant. By facing the door, you’re getting ready for any new opportunity that presents itself. It also saves you from feeling like someone could walk in behind you unnoticed. Facing the door puts you in a position of power.
To really infuse the office with vibrant, healthy energy, add lots of lush plants to the mix. Plants help eliminate carbon dioxide and improve air circulation, as well as help ground the energy in the room. The more natural elements you can bring into the office, the better, as they reduce stress and leave you feeling more solid and connected to the earth.
Water features and crystals can also bring in a sense of tranquility to the office, which is very helpful for both you and your clients. Balance these peaceful elements with splashes of red for an energy boost, brown or green to promote prosperity, and white for mental clarity.
Remember that you don’t need to get too carried away with feng shui decor in order experience its benefits. Start with a few small changes and see how the energy improves in the office. The better the energy flow in the office, the more creative and forward-thinking you and your staff will become. This will in turn attract new clients, who’ll be drawn to the positive chi in your real estate office.
Using Six Sigma To Improve Office Processes
Using Six Sigma to improve office processes may be a relatively new phenomenon, but since the success rate of such quality improvement initiatives is high enough, it will not be wrong to proclaim that the future is certainly bright for such implementations.
Here, we look at how Six Sigma helping businesses to improve their office processes.
Defining Quality and Efficiency Standards
Six Sigma has made it a lot easier for business to define quality and efficiency standards as applicable to office processes, something that is a prerequisite for achieving the desired results. What Six Sigma does is that it converts vague quality and efficiency orders such as “reduce errors”, “work fast” etc. into more definitive terms such as “reduce errors by 15 percent in three months”, “process 20 files per hour” etc.
Now, all this new definitions may seem to be increasing the workload of employees, but that is certainly not true, because Six Sigma relies on time-tested tools and techniques that generate the most appropriate and realistic estimates of employee performance. In fact, employees stand to gain from such definitions because then they will know exactly what the company expects from them.
Additionally, since Six Sigma stresses replacing old inefficient systems with new newer, more efficient technologies, it is highly unlikely that the employees will have to do anything more that what they already might be doing. Businesses also stand to gain because then they can make accurate and timely predictions about human resource requirements.
This allows them to make the best possible use of existing resources, something that consequently results in huge cost savings.
Streamlining Existing Office Processes
Since office processes are quite different from manufacturing processes and since the human aspect needs to be given special consideration while initiating improvement measures in office processes, Six Sigma focuses on gathering input and feedback from employees before starting the tweaking process. Such input and feedback is gathered both at the time when the implementation team is in the process of selecting the right improvement methodology and when a methodology is finally short-listed for final implementation.
Getting such input and feedback is vital because it is the only way a business can possibly devise an improvement initiative that finds favor with the employees as well as gauge their initial reaction to a proposed improvement initiative. Since the success of such projects depends a lot on employee cooperation and support, it makes sense to take them into confidence right from the start. It is only then will the business be able to streamline its existing office processes without causing unnecessary employee disgruntlement or distrust, factors that are not conducive for the future growth prospects of any given business enterprise.
As we can see, Six Sigma does help a lot in improving the quality and efficiency of existing office processes, but what businesses should never forget is that employees are not machines that can be set to perform at specified levels of efficiency, all the time. As such, businesses need to adopt a more tolerant approach while using Six Sigma for improving their office processes.
Office Plants: for a Healthier, Happier Tomorrow
There have been many academic studies and research projects into patient recovery times and methods that speed up the amount of time patients who have just had surgery need to recover. One of the biggest outcomes of these studies was the impact of plants and nature on patients and even on the mood of hospital staff whilst at work.
Whilst many of the studies looked into the effects of outside vegetation for patients who were situated next to a window and had a view of the plants and nature outside, it has to be said that even office plants have health benefits with many office workers feeling more positive and productive when in an environment where office plants are present. It stands to reason then, if outdoor plants have a beneficial effect on health and recovery times that any plants or foliage such as office plants and planted office displays can have a positive effect too.
In his paper entitled ‘Health Benefits of Gardens in Hospitals’, Roger Ulrich of Texas University identified that patients who can see or are close to plants and nature recover much quicker and suffer less stress than those who cannot. The study which monitored 2 sets of patients that had just undergone the same surgical procedures illustrated that the group of patients positioned with a view of the garden recuperated quicker and suffered less post-operative stress than those who did not.
Ulrich claimed that this was as a result of the logical link between plants and man that stems from our evolution and our close links with nature. The physiological and psychological properties of plants have been used for many years to make us feel happier, improving our health and well-being, which is why it is not surprising that the introduction of plants, would have a huge impact in hospitals and clinics.
It has also been claimed by many green enthusiasts that plants and other greenery can bring a sense of meaning and purpose to life with many organisations including schools, office buildings, hotels and hospitals all noting the positive effects of working alongside and with plants. A study conducted by Charles. A. Lewis, a Research Fellow in Horticulture at Morton Arboretum, over a 30 year period looked into the effects of plants and landscaping on numerous people in different communities, neighbourhoods and housing projects.
His paper entitled “The Role of Horticulture in Human Well-being and Social Development” concluded that the implementation of horticulture and landscaping schemes within these areas made a huge difference to how people were feeling about themselves and the area within which they lived. It is therefore possible to deduce from this that an environment such as an office building would become a more positive atmosphere with the introduction of planted office displays.
Now you may be thinking that these kind of positive effects are limited to outside plants and landscaping but this is far from the truth. Indoor plants and interior landscaping schemes can have just as much of an effect on individuals as gardens and external horticulture. The reason for this is that similarly to the results found by Lewis, numerous studies have concluded that even whilst at work office plants can make a huge impact on the health, emotional state, and productivity of office workers.
Indoor office plants like outdoor species help to bring nature into the lives of office workers and because most natural views induce positive feelings amongst groups of people it makes sense that office plants would be utilised by businesses across the UK. Office plants can also help to reduce stress levels and improve productivity in office based employees, making for a more positive or happier working day for office workers across the UK.