With increasing worry over the coronavirus, especially in community buildings, more offices are trying to prevent the spread of germs. As with any illness, there are ways you can reduce the spread of disease.
Educate Employees
The most powerful tool you have to fight against the spread of disease is to educate your employees about proper hygiene. This includes covering their mouth and nose with a facial tissue if they need to cough or sneeze and frequently washing their hands throughout the day. Although there is significant concern regarding the coronavirus, remind employees the disease is not necessarily special and they should use similar hygienic practices they would use to protect themselves against the flu or common cold.
Encourage employees to keep their workstations clean by routinely wiping their desks and keyboard with the appropriate disinfecting wipes, especially if workstations are used by multiple people throughout the day. You should also educate employees about what symptoms to watch out for so they can promptly call their medical care providers if they have a suspected illness.
Focus On Common Areas
Common areas are the main concern regarding the spread of disease. If you have cleaning staff, you should ask them to clean the common areas more frequently than normal. Unless there is a suspected or confirmed illness at the office, the cleaning staff do not need to take additional precautions like wearing gowns or masks while cleaning. If your office does not have cleaning staff throughout the day, at least have someone use a disinfecting wipe to clean off high-traffic areas. These areas include door handles for the restroom and break room. If the break room has a coffee pot, refrigerator, or microwave, routinely wipe off the handle to minimize disease transmission. When you do not have a cleaning staff, it is important to encourage employees to be more proactive about keeping the common areas clean.
Increase Your Deep Cleaning Schedule
Some offices hire a cleaning service for deep cleanings. This is a good time to increase your deep cleaning schedule to more than once per week. Ideally, your cleaning service will also disinfect the office, since cleaning and disinfecting are not the same. In addition to cleaning and disinfecting the common areas, workstations, waiting rooms, and similar places within the office should be addressed. Items that cannot be disinfected through conventional methods, such as using wipes or sprays, would benefit from steam cleaning.
Although the sudden onset of the coronavirus is concerning, it is important to remember cleaning and disinfecting year-round, regardless of the illness is critical to reducing disease transmission.
For more information, reach out to a local office cleaning service.
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