Why it's important to have a clean workspace

Clean-desk critics claim that disorganised desks make people more creative. But office coaches in Germany say tidy desks makes for easier handovers and faster work. — dpa

A pile of important documents, another folder with more papers that will keep until next week, three family holiday photos, a tube of hand cream and a half-eaten bar of chocolate – that’s what a lot of desks look like these days.

But lots of companies want to change that – at least in Germany, where a so-called Clean Desk Policy mandates that all documents are ordered and put away each night to leave a bare desk.