We Are the People of HON – Proud of Our Furniture

The HON Company was born and raised in Muscatine, Iowa – The Pearl of the Mississippi.  Muscatine is the place where ideas flourish, innovation runs rampant, and developing and manufacturing office furniture is in the blood. We are inspired daily by practicality, quality, and service to our customers. That’s why we are proud of our products that are made, designed, engineered, and assembled right here in the USA.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to interview HON members who design, engineer, and assemble our products daily. Each time I asked a HON member about the value of making office furniture in the United States, you could see pride in their eyes. They’re committed to making not just good furniture, but GREAT furniture. Great furniture that they take ownership of, great furniture that they are proud to sell, and great furniture they are proud to produce.

When I think about the importance of developing HON office furniture that is made in the USA, I think about the people who make it possible. The people at HON dream about office furniture in their sleep and are the fanatics who scan the office furniture every time they set foot in a new business or school. The people of HON seek solutions and build relationships. The people at HON turn ideas into reality and build with their hands and their hearts. The people of HON stand behind our office furniture with pride.

Michelle, an assembler at the Geneva seating plant, told me that she produces products that she’s willing to buy. She wants all product that she buys to be high quality, and she believes that is what our customers should expect to get as well.

Don, a CNC operator, has been working at Oak Steel for over 35 years. He told me about his quality checks that he does hourly and his eye for detail that he maintains as he produces each part.

When I talked with Dawn, her energy lit up the room. She joked and laughed so effortlessly with the other members working around her. She walked me through each step that she takes to check for scratches, dents, holes, and bubbles on the welds.

Sarah, a seating product engineer, said, “We incorporate the voice of the customer into every stage of the product development life-cycle. For my role, this means robust engineering that will not compromise our customers’ needs while reducing risk for quality during manufacturing end use.”

Through all these interactions with members, I came to the conclusion that everyone is passionate about what they do at HON. They care about the quality of the products our customers receive and they care about continuously striving to improve – for themselves, for the company, and for our customers.

When buying HON office furniture that’s made in the USA, you are buying products that have been touched by hard working and intelligent minds. I am proud to be a HON member and proud to work for a company that chooses to make building their business in the United States a priority.

 

Written By Bailey Schober, Marketing Specialist

Declutter Your Workspace and Thrive!

Does your office have a pack rat?  The desk that is always cluttered with piles of paperwork strewn about, never able to find what they are looking for? Tackle the mess with these helpful tips to help declutter and clean up your workspace to get back on track:

 

The Worksurface

With work stations often shrinking in today’s office, if we clutter it up with papers and personal items, we lose this valuable real estate.  Take time to work through the stacks of paperwork and organize them into the following categories:

1. Keep — Keep important documents, current projects, and similar items by organizing them into well labeled folders.
2. Trash/Recycle — Recycle old projects and drafts that have been digitized and throw out any old documents that you’ve already looked at. A good rule of thumb: if you haven’t read the articles within the week, recycle or donate them!
3. Shred — We all work with documents that need to be kept confidential. When you are done with them, make sure they end up in the proper shred pile and are discarded properly.
4. Belongs Elsewhere — If something is out of place, return it to its home. Regardless, they don’t belong on your desktop cluttering your work area.

Drawers and Storage

Once you have your work surface organized and decluttered, it’s time to move onto your drawers and smaller office supplies.  Handy tip: if it is smaller than a breadbox, it belongs in a drawer or storage cubby.

 

My desk has a single mug filled with pens, highlighters, and sticky notes.  For a personal touch, I switch out the mug based on the seasons to dress up my desk.  Regularly test your pens and throw away any that are drying up.  Plus, let’s face it, we all have our favorite pen and tend to grab it over and over anyway.  To keep your small supplies handy, use drawer organizer.

 

Personal Items

What about personal items?  We spend a great deal of our day at our desks, so it’s nice to have a few items around to remind us why we’re there. To avoid distraction, try to keep personal items to 3 or less.  Whether that is a small plant, a fun calendar featuring your beloved pet, or a framed photo of the grandkids, keep the items small and swap them out every few weeks to freshen things up.

 

Keep your desk free of bulky items like jackets, purses, and blankets.  Store those in a drawer or overhead to keep your area decluttered.  Don’t forget your work tote/laptop bag—take 10 minutes to clean it out once a week!

 

Putting It Together

A clean desk communicates professionalism; clutter can project a poor work ethic.  Here are a handful of other useful tips to get back on track in the workplace:

• Don’t forget your computer desktop! Schedule set times to check email and answer pending inquiries. Remove temporary files, discard drafts, create folders, and spend time to get organized to make a more productive work day.
• Good lighting is critical—preferably natural lighting. If not, a good task light such as our HLED1 improves mood and causes less stress on eyes.
• Don’t use worksurfaces for storage—use drawers, shelves, and paper management products

• If you find you need more space, enlarge your work station or make creative use of storage options such as the cubes/shelves like HON’s storage cube HLSL1212 available in a variety of fun colors.
• Don’t forget to schedule a time to sanitize and disinfect your work area. Make it a priority to wipe everything down once every other week.
• Make it a habit to tidy up and clean off your desk area during the last 5 minutes of your day. This allows you to have a fresh start with a clean work area every morning.
• If you’re stuck on an item, ask yourself what purpose it serves, how often you use it, and why you’re keeping it!

 

A well-organized, declutter work space provides better focus, improved productivity, less distraction, and peace of mind. We are all leading busy work days but following these tips will help keep your work day on track and live a less cluttered life!

Written by Jen Krambeck

3 Tips for Packing Healthy, Work Friendly Lunches

Packing a lunch everyday can be tough, let alone trying to put effort into packing more than a leftover slice of frozen pizza or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Don’t get me wrong – PB & J is a classic, but here are some tips and ideas to help with packing some healthy, work friendly lunches!

 

Prepare in Advance

Source: Buzzfeed

Before your work week, ensure that you have grocery shopped and stocked up on items that you will need to pack your lunches for the upcoming week. It’s important to clean and chop any fruits and vegetables ahead of time. This way, you have easy access to pack snacks when you’re in a pinch throughout the week. Hard boiled eggs can be made on Sunday for a good protein-packed snack. Depending on your preference, you could even prep all of your lunches on Sunday such as salad mason jars with different toppings, dressing, or veggies for a variety of meals.

 

Keep it Simple

Don’t force yourself to eat things that you don’t like. Forcing yourself to eat something purely because it’s healthy can cause you to search for other options (like splurging on eating out or turning to “vendo-land” for sugar-filled, prepackaged choices). Give yourself something to look forward to with your packed lunch like these buffalo chicken lettuce wraps!

Source: Joyful Eats

Make Enough Dinner for Leftovers

Whether it’s making extra of the dish you’re preparing for dinner or just cooking extra chicken or quinoa, help yourself out and cook larger quantities so you can cook less! Try to reinvent what you’ve made for dinner in the next day’s lunch. For example, any standard chicken dish by night can be turned in to this colorful, mouthwatering chicken burrito bowl by day!

 

Say goodbye to your everyday, boring lunch or kick the expensive eating out habit! Give some of these recipes a try! Is it lunch time yet?

 

Written by Jenisa Peiffer, The HON Company

7 Ways to Spice Up Your Space

Despite the groundhog’s (seemingly false) claims of an early spring, we’re buried under an increasing amount of snow and ice here in the Midwest. Reminiscent of the forlorn offices of yesteryear, the grey and white canvas leaves us wanting more!

Bypass the winter blues (and greys) with these seven tips to spice up your workspace!

1. Add Color to The Cube – It’s no secret that color can do amazing things to breathe life into your workspace. Adding a new Colorwav lumbar to your Solve chair in Bullseye red or Krypton green can break up the monotony of a dull or colorless space.

2. Let in The Light! – Pull down those dreary drapes and let in the natural light! Brightening your workspace not only allows for a little extra Vitamin D, but it also provides measurable health benefits. Try your hand at an open office with loads of natural light!

3. Splash Some Paint – White walls are boring walls. Adding an accent wall can infuse some fun into an ordinary space. Whether you choose a bold color, wallpaper, or even a texture like woodgrain, they make a statement and spice up the conventional workspace.

4. Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize – Don’t let bland be the standard. With Colorwav now available on Voi Cubes and paper management, you can banish the boring. Accessorize your workstation with your favorite color!

5. Give Greenery a Go – While you may be unable to escape into the wilds of the Amazon, you can always bring greenery to you. Studies have shown that adding indoor plants can have numerous benefits including increased productivity, stress reduction, and improved health. Who wouldn’t want that?

6. Picture This – Stuck staring at walls you can’t paint? Wall decals and framed prints can break up the monotonous white or add some backing to your brand. Try adding some historical photos of your company’s roots or breakthrough ad campaigns!

7. Let Them Lounge – Collaboration and comfortable seating? Yes please. Common areas are in high demand and are gaining popularity. Lounge spaces built with comfortable seating like Flock create a space that’s anything but bland.

Don’t let the winter blues keep you down – spice up your work space! Add your own tips for a colorful and vibrant office below!

5 Ways to Reinvent Yourself in 2019

January: a time for the post-holiday blues, scraping icy windshields, and of course, New Years’ resolutions. Resolutions aren’t your thing? As an alternative to the singularly focused resolution, let’s try an overhaul in 2019! Here’s five areas where you can revitalize and remake yourself this year:

 

Minding Your Mindset

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” This well-known quote by Charles R. Swindoll illustrates that your mindset can change how you view the world. While there’s plenty of negativity out there, one thing that’s solely dependent on you is your attitude. Half full or half empty? Take a different approach in 2019 if you’re envisioning just how empty that cup is!

 

Learn Something New

Expanding your horizons, while cliché, is an excellent notion. Learn about recent furniture trends or read a new book about leadership. Or, if you only have ten minutes a day, let your curiosity find a worthy Ted Talk about business.

Don’t Settle for Second Best

Still sore from losing out on a big account in 2018? Take that passion and plow forward into uncharted territory. Go after your next big sale with an appetite to win. If you’re a naturally competitive person, try to take things up a notch from 2018 or try out some of the new skills or ideas you came across while learning something new!

 

Failing Forward

Fortunately, failure isn’t fatal. And while failure does occasionally sting, it’s also a recipe for innovation. Without an obligatory red mark on a report, we’d never learn to improve. When these ‘failures’ do happen, step back and say why? You might just find that the freedom to fail liberates you to do your best work.

 

Be Well While You Work

Yes, even we’ve been bitten by the inevitable wellness resolution. Why? Even if we only spend eight hours a day at the office, that’s half of our awake time on any given day. Invest in yourself and try a few healthy habits while you’re working. Check out our blog post, 15 Tips to Find Your Fitness at the Office from last year!

 

Bursting at the seams to try these out? Strive to be a better version of yourself this year. Give it a go and let us know!

3 Tips for Staying Ahead of the Holidays

As the holidays approach and we welcome a time of celebration, ensure that everything is covered prior to closing time. To do this, plan ahead so that you don’t fall behind in the interim. Check out our three tips below on how to get ahead of that work:

 

Tip 1: Create a To Do List

Make a list of work that could be completed before you leave the office. Once the list is written, go back over it and prioritize things that must be done before the break. The more you accomplish before break, the better position you return to. Not only is this beneficial for customers, but co-workers who count on you in everyday tasks will appreciate your preparedness!

Tip 2: Reach Out!

Prior to closing for the holidays, reaching out to customers and coworkers can open the door for any last-minute assistance they may need. Additionally, letting customers know when you will be out of the office and when you’ll return is helpful in determining important deadlines or if work needs to be covered.

 

Tip 3: Enjoy the Holidays

Getting ahead and leaving yourself in a good place before you leave allows for a less stressful return. Though there may be tasks that need completed once you return, clear expectations and priorities can aid in some transition back to work.

 

As we near the holidays, zone in and accomplish what you need so that you can enjoy the festivities. Make a list, check it twice, and get ahead. What are you some of your tips for staying ahead of the holidays?

 

Written by Stephanie Roan

15 Tips to Improve Your Productivity at Work

While we all know that twiddling our fingers and shooting the breeze with nearby co-workers limits our productivity, not all of us are clued in to productive habits. If you’ve ever wondered how to get more out of the limited hours of your work day, here’s a few tips to get you on the right track!

• Plug In
  • Work better with headphones in? Find the music that beats your drum. Or, drown out the noisy neighbor or the irritating sounds of construction.
• Tackle the To-Do List
  • Set it and stick to it. Try sorting out 3-5 tasks a day that you want to complete, and make them your highest priority. Plus, crossing things out always feels good!
• Enforce Your Email Plan
  • Try limiting the compulsive email checking; focus on the task at hand and don’t get distracted. If it helps, turn off new email previews or any distracting alerts.
• Manage Your Meetings
  • Not everything needs an hour discussion; schedule meetings for the appropriate amount of time. Send out an agenda beforehand and don’t follow tangents.
• Know When You Shine
  • Bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7am? Tackle your toughest assignments in the morning. Need a nap at 2pm (who doesn’t)? Schedule something monotonous during that time period.
• Unplug
  • Put your personal iPhone away. Not only does this help with distractions, but it keeps work and personal time separate.
• Scheduled Work Time
  • Booked in meetings 24/7? Schedule some ‘Me Time’ on your calendar to work away in the closest Flock touchdown station.

• Short and Sweet
  • While writing a novel in an email may nail out the details, only a short one encourages a full read. Keep to the high points instead of adding more characters.
• Take a Break
  • No, really. Energize yourself and shake off the naptime feeling with a quick walk around the office when you feel you’re losing focus.
• Cut It Out
  • The simple beauty of Ctrl + C is a magical thing. Cut the fat by using keyboard shortcuts and favorites for repetitive actions.
• Fuel Your Fire
  • No one can run on steam. To have some fuel in the tank, take time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Plus, who doesn’t love food?
• Write It Down
  • Capture each task or project by writing them down. Writing it down frees up some of your brain’s hard drive for a little extra processing power!
• Just Say No
  • If you’re a habitual ‘Yes Man’, time to change your tune. Saying ‘No’ when you’re overloaded or not meeting commitments could be the wisest call of your day.
• Pick Up the Phone
  • Instead of playing email tag, pick up the phone. Having an actual discussion can resolve an issue in a matter of minutes, whereas email could leave it unresolved for days.
• Try Delegating
  • Don’t stretch yourself too thin. Though many people shudder at delegation, try handing off tasks or assignments that could be handled by someone else.

 

Start small; try to tackle two or three of these to see how it improves your productivity. Once you’ve mastered the art, or have a few of your own to share, add your hat to the pile and comment below!