The Answer is Right at Hand

One of the main purposes of the visual workplace is to build the details of work into the physical environment and improve adherence, allowing people to work precisely with increasing self-regualtion. Now if you work with a group of library student workers or volunteers, you are always looking for ways to improve adherence, precision, and self-regualtion. Many libraries rely heavily on students and volunteers. However, after initial training sessions, how often do we re-train and evaluate their work? With good visual workplace practices, we can alleviate some of that extra re-training and supervision.

For example - shelving books. We train students and volunteers to shelve books, but we send them off with a cart of books and no support information on hand. A book cart is essentially a portable work station. Why not include simple shelving instructions (hopefully reminders!) with each cart that goes out? They can be laminated, attached magnetically to the side, whatever works for your environment. In that case, if a student or volunteer has a question, the answer is right at hand.