Organizing your physical workspace is one of those jobs that never makes it onto the to-do list, because there is always something more urgent going on. But it’s not say that it isn’t important to consider – especialyl for EAs.
So I want you to think about the actual state of your desk right now. Not the version you’d probably describe to someone on your best day, but the real one, at four o’clock on a Thursday.
There’s probably a printed agenda for a meeting that finished last week. A pile you’ve been meaning to file properly since March. A sticky note with a dial-in code on it. A drawer that has slowly become a graveyard for cables and lanyards and whatever else got swept into it before a visitor arrived.
Am I guessing this sounds familiar?
Now, most generic advice about organizing your physical workspace will assume you own the desk, you chose where it goes, and nobody walks past it unannounced. Very few Executive Assistants work like that, so this advice is going to be a little different.
We sit outside our Executive’s office, or in the open-plan area nearest the meeting rooms, or at whatever hot desk was free at eight in the morning. People stop at our desks all day, and while they’re waiting for us to finish a sentence, they can’t help but start reading the document we’ve got open either on our desk or on the computer.
Your desk is one of the most exposed information points in the building. Board papers, restructure plans, candidate CVs, the visitor list for a meeting that hasn’t been announced yet. Most of it passes across your desk before it passes anywhere else, and often before anyone else in the organization is supposed to know it exists.
This article covers the confidentiality side of organizing your physical workspace first, because it gets the least attention, and then the practical setup for a desk that can hold a lot of secrets.
Whether you’re looking to master the latest tech trends, simplify complex tasks, or bring fresh ideas to your organization, this comprehensive resource will empower you to work smarter, not harder. Don’t miss out—download your copy now and take your EA game to the next level!
Before you touch a single drawer, sit in your chair and look at your desk the way a visitor would.
Check your screen angle first. If someone standing at your desk can read your inbox while they’re talking to you, that’s a small, potentially confidential leak that will happen several times a day. Turn the monitor, or ask for a privacy filter. They cost very little, and most IT teams will approve one without much of a conversation if you explain who you support.
Give confidential paper a locked home rather than a neat pile.
A tidy stack of board papers is exactly as readable as an untidy one. If you don’t have a lockable drawer, that’s a reasonable thing to ask for, and asking is easier when you frame it around the documents you are working with rather than the furniture budget you are asking for. This might also be a reason why you shouldn’t be using a hot desk, I know most of us aren’t printing documents off these days, but there will be times you do and sitting at a hot desk makes it more of a problem.
Deal with paper the day it arrives.
It is so easy for the pile of papers to build up because each individual sheet isn’t a big deal, abut you’ll find six weeks later you’re holding a stack of papers you can’t safely put in the bin and we all know how long it can take to shred chunky documents and how unreliable those machines can be.
Look at your whiteboard.
If you are using a whiteboard or your Executive has one this applies to their office also. Make sure you clear this every day. Names, initials, dates, project codenames. We write shorthand up there because we know what it means, and forget that a codename plus a date plus two sets of initials tells a curious person quite a lot.
That’s the security half of organizing your physical workspace. The other half is what happens when the desk isn’t yours to organize.
Hot desking has made all of this good practice much harder, and most workspace advice hasn’t caught up. Three-quarters of companies surveyed by CBRE now use unassigned or shared seating for at least some employees, reflecting the rapid growth of hot desking alongside hybrid working
When you can’t set anything up permanently, organizing your physical workspace has to become portable. What you need to do is build a kit that turns any surface into your desk in under five minutes.
Mine would include a charger, a small folder for anything printed, a headset that reduces background noise, a pen and notebook, and also probably some Post-it notes. Yours will of course be different, but when you are putting your kit together, the best thing to ask yourself is: can you sit at an unfamiliar desk at 8:45 and be operational before your Executive’s first call?
You also need to consider the end of the day. Everything either goes home with you or gets locked away, and anything printed gets shredded.
That sounds obsessive, I know, but the habit will become normal within about a week, and you don’t have to worry about anything being forgotten or easily accessed if you are not in the office the next day.
Organizing your physical workspace won’t be part of your objectives or get mentioned in your review. But it’s one of the few things that is entirely within your control, will help with your productivity and build confidence in your ability to manage confidential matters, which leads to your Executive trusting you explicitly.
Share this article:
Join 30,000+ Assistants receiving our carefully crafted weekly newsletter packed with valuable tips, tricks, and insights tailored specifically for Assistants like you.
