Cold & Flu Season: 6 Office Cleaning Best Practices to Keep Everyone Healthy and Safe
Despite our best efforts, vaccines, diet, regular exercise, and vitamin supplements, we cannot avoid the cold and flu season that strikes twice yearly. There is an old saying that prevention is better than cure. So, what can we do in an office where people are near each other daily?
While there is no cure yet, helping to reduce the risks in this environment is a surefire way to ease the season.
1. Keep It Clean
Germs travel on our hands, clothing, and even in the breath we expel during conversations. They spread quickly onto surfaces we touch, just waiting for the next person to come along and pick them up.
Encouraging your staff to be diligent about keeping their work area clean and using hand sanitizer helps to kill off the bacteria and viruses that are just waiting to pounce on the next unsuspecting person.
Providing disinfectant wipes so that each cubicle has its own supply helps your staff to keep things like keyboards, phones, and the desk clean and germ-free and encourages this clean workspace without the staff feeling like they have to come up with ways on their own.
2. Care Packages
Showing your staff that you care boosts morale, energy, and productivity and promotes a healthy environment. A little gift box with Kleenex, vitamin C, fruit, and cleaning wipes goes a long way.
Providing face masks for people to use and encouraging social distancing proved a great safe way for people to live and work during the pandemic, and this can be just as beneficial in cold and flu season.
But just letting your staff know that they can stay home if they are sick, without penalty, certainly in today's economy, helps to reduce some of the stress about getting sick and helps to contain the spread.
3. Step Up the Routine Cleaning
Increasing your office cleaning services during this season helps reduce the risk of sickness and promotes a healthy work environment. You should pay special attention to communal places such as kitchens and bathrooms.
While cleaning your keyboard and desk phone daily, places like toilet handles and stall doors are riskier as people tend to forget about them. So, increased office cleaning helps these forgotten areas get the attention they need to help prevent the spread.
If your business is open to the public, or you host clients for meetings and conferences, then a heightened cleaning presence is crucial for clients to see. It helps them feel safe and taken care of when on your premises.
4. It's Not Just What You Carry In
When people start coughing and sneezing, blaming them is easy for bringing in the virus and infecting others. However, your staff may not be at fault. If there are any places in the office where condensation can gather, this can harbour germs and encourage them to grow faster than on a person who casually walks in.
Take care of damp windows, water leaks, and other wet places. Clean and repair them if necessary to prevent a build-up and have zero infections.
Ventilation is another area that can either help or hinder the cold and flu season. Proper ventilation helps air flow and encourages cleaner air to enter and the old, stale air to go. It also helps to prevent condensation on windows, reducing the risks.
5. It’s the Small Things That Matter
Only some businesses have the budget to invest in care packages or even afford to have staff off due to sickness. Focusing on the longer goal and having something in place that can help year-round can be the way to go.
Air purifiers not only help filter out allergens or dust, but they can filter out germs, bacteria, and viruses that cause sickness. While these devices vary in size, they can work silently in the background like an unsung hero in the workplace.
Regular filter maintenance in larger conditioning units and heating systems checked all work to promote a healthier workspace, resulting in less time off sick and higher productivity.
6. Stay Home
Easier said than done, as it can be hard to function when low on staff, but in some cases, it is best to stay home and not spread the infection to others. Your employees need to know that they can take time off to rest and get better.
Many people prefer to come in as there is too much work, or someone else is off as a show of support for other colleagues, but this can be detrimental in the long run.
So What's Best?
There are several ways to keep everyone healthy in the workforce, from the small things like oranges in the break room to air purifiers and even complimentary hand sanitizer.
Working alongside a professional cleaning company expert in caring for your cleaning requirements and going above and beyond your typical surface wipe-down is the secret weapon in your fight against the cold and flu season.
RBC Clean provides professional office cleaning services and has been the choice of Canadians for all commercial office cleaning services for many years. Skilled and equipped to handle all cleaning challenges, from small offices to large office blocks with multiple floors. There is no space too big or small.
Up to date in the latest techniques and products to disinfect and clean, professional and efficient so as not to disrupt the work day, and trained in heavy-duty cleaning such as external windows on the 4th floor, RBC Clean will take you to new heights in cleanliness standards to rival the competition.
Call 1-855-495-9259 today or contact us here for a free quote and keep your staff healthy without them realizing it.