How the Busylight Improves Production in a Real-World Office
You have heard the rumours. You have seen the news snippets, the marketing paraphernalia, the job advertisement postings, the word of mouth recollections. You may have caught a glimpse, on your daily commute, through the bright windows – stretching from one corner of the wall to the other corner, large incomprehensible sculptures dominating the view. Legend has it that these offices do exist, and not just in the movies. A working space where employees lounge on beanbags, sprawl on psychiatrist style chairs under said sculptures, slip off for forty winks in a specially designated nap room. They do everything but sit at their shared desk or cubicle – they’ll be rhythmically bobbing on an oversized exercise ball, hanging from the ceiling in a tear drop shaped pod or simply having a friendly game of ping pong while musing with a co-worker. All the while, everyone is plugged in, earphones – on ear and in ear; wireless or connected; headphones on, in, over ear; minimal and brash, all sorts – but nobody is talking! Any number of headsets are in use by the majority of the workers, but not for business, rather it is to listen to an Albanian deep house concentration playlist, a podcast on how keeping a morning journal can improve your digestive system and keep you regular, maybe just a reliable old radio show – digital of course. In all the sound, the silence is deafening….. Let the Busylight guide you.
But this doesn’t apply to you, nor most people who live in the real world for that matter. You know a very different office life, it’s one which was designed to have as many workers fit into the space as possible. And those employees? When you look out across the maze of cubicles, they’re all talking. Talking on the phone. It’s a cacophony of sales, customer service, market research and much more. If this sound more like your reality, then all you need is the busylight. It will change your world, in a way an oversized contorted elephant sculpture in the lobby never could.
The Busylight, if you don’t know is a pluggable device that has a very simple but effective function. When connected to your laptop or desktop, commonly via USB, it shines a light. Green for available, red for busy or on a call, and yellow for away. Beautiful in its rudimentary simplicity, however anything but basic. The advantages of employing the device are numerous and can have a real impact on your real world office dynamic.
The busylight is straightforward in its operation, and that is the primary benefit. This is not the engineering of a rocket ship, nor your latest Smart Phone release. By having one clear and precise purpose, the message is indisputable – at a glance fellow co-workers, supervisors, everyone can tell whether someone is available or not. More importantly they know whether the person in question can be interrupted or not. That is intelligent design.
While that is the primary function of the busylight, the secondary function also capacitates your workforce. The light will flash blue and also ring for incoming calls and messages, and also highlights to workers in this way if they have missed a call. You can also apply a call forwarding system through the software of the device. Keyboard shortcuts can be programmed very easily to further assist the device’s user.
There are also two styles of busylight – one more suited to laptops, and an open plan office. The second designed for Desktops and cubicle style office spaces.
This all amounts to create a very important benefit. A benefit for workers and company alike – time efficiency. For example, you have a busy day and need to confirm something with a colleague at the other side of the office space. The busylight means you can simply look across the room and see the co-worker’s status. At the same time what’s important is what you don’t have to do. You don’t have to stand up and traipse all the way over, wait for a couple of minutes hoping the call will end, only to return sullen and defeated, with no confirmation. It’s amazing how this simple enhancement to your daily schedule can improve your demeanour, productivity and ultimately your working life.
This Busylight effect is amplified on a company level. Employees are working in tandem and time is used more effectively by all. People are spending the minutes and hours doing their jobs, not just trying and failing to do their jobs.
The busylight can also have a positive outcome for your clients and customers – it is noticeable how less calls are interrupted, less of your staff are distracted or lacking in concentration when on calls, and as mentioned, when the correspondents have an improved demeanour as a result of this, the positive energy is transferred to the end customer.