Plogging In The Workplace: The Value Of Replacing Bad Practices With Good Practices & How To Do It

What do you think of when someone mentions plogging? If your first thought is "picking up trash after a jaunt," then you're not alone. But it's more than that! Ploggers keep areas clean by picking up litter and recycling items while they run or walk to stay healthy, have fun, meet new people and get outdoors in the fresh air. So, how can we apply these same principles at work? 

In this post, we’ll discuss how we can apply the same principles of plogging to improve the employee experience and, in turn, your business’s bottom line.

What Does Plogging Mean In The Business Setting?

Plogging, in the business setting, means identifying inefficiencies and removing them from your business. Say you have a bad practice, as a company, to always run over time during meetings. Instead of ending at 11 like everyone’s calendar says, you end at 11:30. As a plogger, you would follow the steps below.

Step 1. Identify The Bad Practice(s)

There are obviously many reasons why a business may become inefficient. It could be that employees don't have time to work on projects due to excessive distractions or there are no clear lines of communication between departments. In either case, identifying the source of inefficiency is the first step towards cleaning up the process in the workplace.

For example, you run meetings longer than expected. Because of this, employees miss their next meeting which also runs over. By the end of the day, your employees lost an hour of working time because 2 of their meetings ran 30 minutes over. That’s the kind of bad practice that you’re looking to uncover. It may require some detective work for sure!

Step 2. Remove The Bad Practice(s)

When you can identify what doesn’t work well, you offer your business an opportunity to improve. Simply stating that meetings running over aren’t tolerable regardless of seniority you set expectations for all of your employees to follow. This leads to employees consistently managing one another without feeling discouraged to do so.

Step 3. Replace The Bad Practice(s) With A Better One

At its core, many inefficiencies come from lack of planning. In this meeting example, it could be that the employee running the meeting didn’t prepare or wasn’t well-equipped to run it without several hiccups along the way. On the other hand, maybe the employee was prepared and was well-equipped to run it smoothly, but simply was not allotted enough time to deliver. In either case, both came from lack of planning.

In this scenario, you would have two options. 

1. Lengthen the meeting to the time you need plus a 10 minute buffer
2. Plan and rehearse the meeting if it includes a lot of information

The Ultimate Goal: Increasing Efficiency And Revenue

What it all comes down to is eliminating disorganization. By doing so, you end up with more satisfied employees, less attrition and more dedication from employees doing the work they were hired to do. Plogging in the workplace is a no-brainer. If your business can eliminate 2 bad practices or even just 1, you start to introduce a dynamic workplace culture.