Fellowes’ Guide To De-cluttering Your Home

Ever feel like you’re drowning in too much ‘stuff’?

Thanks to busy lifestyles, it’s all too easy to let clutter build up around the home. Keeping on top of everything can almost feel like an impossible task.

If it’s time to salvage your home from the chaos, Fellowes® – experts in all things organisation, are here to help you stay clear of the clutter – for good.

Having a clear out will not only make you feel liberated and ready to tackle anything and everything but you’ll also find things that you never knew you had.

Everything needs a home, but first things first – you need to decide what to keep, toss or donate. The biggest obstacle to getting rid of anything is having to make that choice.

Always consider the most lived in spaces within your home – whether that’s the office or the kitchen, these rooms often hoard the most clutter.

It’s important to prioritise what goes where. Be sure that your de-cluttering regime suits you, your home, family and lifestyle. There’s no ‘one fits all’ method to tackling a clutter catastrophe – order the things that you need the most in convenient and accessible places and be sure to keep essentials close by!

Whether you’re spring cleaning your entire home or just looking to make-over your home office, Fellowes has the answer.

A Sense of Order

Storing things in boxes, sorters and drawers contributes to a sense of visual order.

Stay in control and keep things in order with Bankers Box®. With its selection of storage solutions, from all-important file sorters for organising mail, home admin, work and more to stackable and easy-to-access storage boxes – Bankers Box® will help clear the clutter.

Ideal for keeping your home neat and tidy Bankers Box® offers quality and functional storage options available in all shapes and sizes for when you’re putting away the Christmas decorations, storing children’s toys and seasonal clothing or filing important papers.

Looking for more space to store your stuff? Make every inch work hard and minimise all unused space. Beneath the bed is a forgotten place and yet can offer a ton of flexible storage. Bankers Box® UnderBed storage solutions are designed to slot under standard beds. Featuring large windows, you can quickly view the contents without opening each box.

Storage doesn’t have to be visually dull – we say allow your storage to blend well with your living space and interior. Choose storage boxes that suit your décor and label them accordingly so organising them becomes less of a chore.

For further information on the full Bankers Box® product range, visit www.bankersbox.com.

Home Office Organisation

They say a tidy desk equals a tidy mind.

When it comes to filing habits at work and at home we all favour doing it a certain way.

With more flexible home working, filing continues to be as important as it ever has been. 47 per cent of professionals declared that a combination of more storage and an improved filing system would better their organisation.

An efficient workstation needs to be organised. It’s all about prioritising.

Efficient filing is made easy with effective storage and shredding solutions. Fellowes® home office shredders are sleek and compact for quick and secure desk side shredding. Not only do they help reduce unwanted paperwork but they’ll help protect against prying eyes.

Passports, insurance documents, driving licences, bank statements – the list of paperwork and life admin that is stored within the home goes on.

To begin reducing the volume of confidential papers building up in your home, make a habit to shred everything you don’t need straight away.

The chances are that you won’t be able to fully eliminate all paper from your home, but you can certainly try and limit it.

The worry of destroying something and not being able to retrieve it has now been overcome as digital copies are now so readily accessible.

It’s important to consider what type of shredder is best suited to your needs. For the home, it needs to have effortless operation, a sizable waste bin, compact design and ultimately faultless performance – Fellowes shredders tick every box!

To choose a shredder that best suits your needs visit Fellowes®.

Fellowes also offers a range of home office ergonomics to provide comfort and overall enhanced wellbeing. Some 88 per cent of office workers believe they are creatures of habit when it comes to workplace behaviours.

Making just a few simple changes could have a significant impact on wellbeing, with foot rests, wrist supports and height adjustable desks cited as some of the ergonomic products that would help reduce work-related ailments.

For more top tips and inspiration on de-cluttering and home office solutions, visit Fellowes® or follow on social @FellowesUK and @Fellowes.

Shoulder Surfing: The Dangers

What is shoulder surfing?

We’ve all heard about the dangers of being watched when you’re withdrawing money from an ATM. The machines themselves have warnings plastered all over them – ‘shield your pin to avoid theft’– and in general we tend to take the necessary precautions.

What you might not have heard about is ‘shoulder surfing’. This is when information thieves use observation techniques to purposely try and steal data from your device while you browse. Whether that is by peering over your shoulder to look at your mobile phone or tablet on a crowded train, looking at your computer screen across a busy office or watching you through binoculars while you are using one of these devices.

The dangers of shoulder surfing?

We are all at risk when it comes to shoulder surfing. If the wrong person becomes privy to sensitive information or data, it can cause you a multitude of problems. It could lead to theft of your debit card details while you are innocently online shopping. Of course this issue could be easily remedied by cancelling your card and you’d come out relatively unscathed – although potentially with a lighter wallet depending on your bank’s policy.

Identity theft or the loss of other people’s data – in an office environment for example – is another story. The former can lead to financial, legal or credit issues while the latter could cause animosity or legal concerns in the office if, for instance, HR files are revealed – salaries, confidential data etc.

How to combat it

Luckily, it is possible to protect your private information and that of others that you are responsible for. Firstly, we would advise that you only access these documents or use your debit card online when you are in the privacy of your own home or using a computer which faces a wall where possible at work.

Of course, it isn’t always possible to take these precautions, depending on your office layout or what is happening at the time. In these circumstances, a privacy screen will come in handy.

Privacy screens

PrivaScreen privacy filters enhance your privacy by making your screen appear ‘blacked out’ when viewed from a 30 degree angle. Only somebody standing directly in front of the device (you) will be able to view your data. Whether you’re looking to protect your desktop computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone, PrivaScreen has filters in all shapes and sizes.

Browse the full range of PrivaScreen products at Fellowes today and find the privacy filter you need for your device.

Stop It! 10 Workplace Habits That Are Driving Your Colleagues Insane

It’s bound to happen. Sitting in the same room, with the same group of people, for eight hours a day, five days a week there will always be little things that irritate or annoy you at work. Nobody – and no office – is perfect!

However, there are a few common bugbears we could all avoid for a more harmonious workplace. If you’re guilty of any of the habits on the list below you may well be getting on your colleagues’ nerves.

1. Taking personal phone calls at your desk
   We all have personal emergencies every now and then, those aren’t the sort of phone calls we’re talking about here.
   We mean the gossipy call to your best friend that lasts for the entire lunch hour, the baby talk with your other half or the passive aggressive argument you’re having with your mother, which should all have been left outside the office.
   Let your co-workers get to know you at after-work drinks or the office party, not by forcing them to listen to one side of your personal life while you’re on the phone.
2. Smelly foods
   We’ve all been there, someone close by is eating something that, while it may taste great, has a lingering odour that makes your workspace uninhabitable. Tuna, garlic, egg and marinated meats are all big offenders and best avoided when you’re eating in a communal area. Speaking of which, eating at your desk in general is a sure fire way to irk your co-workers. Noisy chewing, crumbs and dirty plates on your desk don’t make for a professional working environment. No workplace would begrudge you 30 minutes to eat in the kitchen – even on your busiest days!
3. Lazy kitchen hygiene
   Another food related pet peeve, but there’s no reason for anyone else in the office to have to clear up your dirty dishes. Everyone is busy and everyone has better things to be doing, so spend the extra couple of minutes it takes to wash up and put your dishes away when you’ve finished eating.
4. Poor email etiquette
   The dreaded ‘Reply All’ button! No one appreciates their inbox being filled up with spammy emails, so apply a less-haste-more-speed rule to your replies and check how many people you’re replying to before you hit send.
5. Bad parking
   Office parking is usually a tight squeeze and poor parking only exacerbates the problem. Whether you’ve stolen someone else’s space, taken up multiple spots or blocked another car in, you’re simply inciting road rage from your colleagues!
6. The thermostat police
   When it comes to office temperature, the truth is, there’s no pleasing everybody. Our best advice: if you know you’re a particularly cold person leave a jumper or cardigan at work so you always have a spare layer to put on and if you’re the other way round, maybe invest in a desk-top fan for those times the office reaches tropical temperatures!
7. Tardiness
   Whether you’re ten minutes late at the start of the day or five minutes late to a meeting, tardiness looks sloppy, unprofessional and somebody always notices.
   What’s probably worse is that tardiness can also make you seem arrogant. They say the most important person at a meeting always shows up last, but you don’t want to gain a negative reputation.
8. Wasting time in meetings
   As important as it is to contribute to the meetings you attend – there’s little to no point in you being there otherwise – try and apply the ‘so what?’ rule to everything you say or, if your comments and feedback are directed at one colleague in particular, follow up with a one-to-one conversation after the meeting.
9. Loud talkers
   People who lack a volume control are completely distracting in an office environment. Whether it’s shouting on the phone, talking over others in meetings, or noisy conversation at your desk, be mindful of the people working around you.
10. ‘Borrowing’ equipment
    Genuinely borrowing stationery, or other supplies, from your colleagues is completely acceptable. It’s borrowing and not returning that irritates people. Whether it’s your colleague’s personal equipment or an item supplied by the company, failing to return what you borrowed will simply inconvenience your
    co-worker and won’t make you popular.

Hopefully not too many of these bad habits apply to your place of work! Why not take a look at our Solutions Centre for other helpful hints and tips for making your office work better.

IBM’s New Cyber Attack Simulator

Information technology company IBM has revealed its new cybersecurity headquarters in Kendall Square, Massachusetts. The new office – at 10,000 square foot – more than triples the size of their previous address and holds the first commercial cyber range in the private sector.

This kind of technology – which simulates various cyber-attacks and then tests an organisation’s ability to deal with them in real time – has only been used by the military until now.

Named X-Force Command, IBM’s high-tech simulator includes two walls dedicated to large displays and over 30 computers. To explain the process simply, IBM have created a fictional digital company, complete with customer information and financial data flowing through ‘‘air gapped’’ servers, which means they are disconnected from the wider internet. There will also be typical operations being simulated daily, such as employees internet surfing, supply chain software in action et cetera.

The team in the cyber range will then simulate attacks on the company and the visiting organisation’s team will set to work trying to respond to it. For the next few weeks, IBM will be testing the cyber range with several companies and aiming to open the service to the wider business community by January 1^st 2017.

IBM Security’s Vice President of Strategy, Caleb Barlow, has explained that their intention is not to charge for the service, but to raise awareness of cyber attacks, as an asset to the region. However, Barlow says that in the future, some customers may want personalised simulations – suited to their company’s specific issues – and in this case IBM might charge for them.

There is also the possibility that the service will triumph as a sales tool, as company teams will use IBM software and products to try and counter the cyber attacks during the simulation.

Here at Fellowes, we take the safety of your company’s data very seriously. Browse privacy screens and shredders today to maximise your company’s security.