Gleaming glistening corporate offices, designer suits, company jets and all the sophisticated technology that money can buy are seen as essential to the advance of big business.
Though, in actual fact, most FTSE 100 companies wouldn’t be able to function without the addition of certain very humble objects in their repertoire.
1. Chairs and desks
If you employ staff they have to be able to sit at a desk. An article in The Guardian advocates the efficiency of the ‘stand up meeting’ but the person who’s tasked with typing up the minutes of these cerebral challenges will still have to be seated at a desk with a comfortable chair.
Of course, if the chair is on castors from Tente UK, at least they will be able to move between the printer and their desk at speed, and the paperless revolution has yet to become a fact of life in most offices. Companies can ensure that the chairs are comfortable and the desks are large enough to cope with the volume of work that most hard working PAs have to negotiate, and without these functional pieces of furniture, most businesses would fail.
2. Water feeds life – the water cooler
Every one needs sufficient quantities of H2O in order to be able to live. The advent of the water cooler is not only necessary for staff wellbeing; it’s also proved to be the venue of social interaction within most companies. Physical interaction is important, endless emails don’t provide a solution.
3. The humble paper clip
According to The Daily Mail, the humble paper clip still plays a large role in the lives of our MPs. Whitehall can definitely be classified as big business, there are currently 412,000 civil servants, and while some of these employees aren’t engaged in office work, most of them are. Add to that number researchers, secretaries and MPs themselves, you’re talking about an awful lot of paperclips.
You could argue that staples have surpassed use of the paperclip, but if someone wants to clip together pages of a file, and doesn’t want them to be damaged, then the paperclip rules supreme.
4. The pencil
With the advent of tracking changes and other online editing processes, some people may be forgiven for thinking that the pencil was redundant. Think again. Every time, someone makes an electronic change to a document, that change will exist somewhere on a server for infinity. Lawyers, doctors MPs academics and CEO’s use pencils because their thoughts can remain private. The pencil is still important in all sectors of contemporary business life.
5. Desk Telephones
If you listened to the advertisements, you may be forgiven for thinking that the mobile or smartphone is the problem solving solution for all businesses. If you work in certain parts of the country or world, it most certainly isn’t. Poor reception in some areas still remains a problem, and without an old-fashioned desk telephone, some businesses wouldn’t be able to function.
The Daily Telegraph cited an example of poor mobile reception in the UK. This doesn’t just apply to international business or Prime Ministers. The desk phone is much more reliable.
