Even if you boast the highest standards of employee safety and health, your facility can still be contributing to an unsafe or unhealthy environment. A lot of businesses have a mentality that they’re as healthy as their employees, but that’s not the case. In fact, the opposite is true. A business is only as healthy as its office or facility is clean. Ineffective office cleaning can trap pathogens, bacteria, and viruses so that they spread between employees and to clients long before anyone realizes it. The compact nature of an office building means that germs can spread easily from person to person. It also means that more people are touching the same surfaces and if those surfaces aren’t clean, then more people will get sick from them.
The break room in an office, public restrooms in a business, or other high-traffic areas can facilitate the transmission of colds, the flu, COVID-19, and other illnesses. The best way to combat this is through effective office cleaning. But what does that mean exactly? To answer that, you need to consider the question: has ineffective office cleaning made your facility unhealthy or unsafe?
Understanding the Difference Between Clean and Sanitized
A lot of people use janitorial services that come in and clean every day or at least once a week. What many people don’t realize is that janitorial services don’t necessarily sanitize the office space. Many janitorial cleaning companies only focus on surface cleaning and while your office visually looks better, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s cleaner or safer for your employees or clients. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your professional cleaning company is trained in disinfecting and sanitizing surfaces after they’ve gone through a preliminary cleaning. Sanitizing kills close to 99.99% of bacteria, viruses, pathogens, and other dangerous germs while cleaning removes the visual impurities and leaves bacteria to flourish. In times like these, sanitization has never been more important.
Another key factor that differentiates a good cleaning service from a bad one is the focus on eliminating cross-contamination. Cross-contamination occurs frequently in office settings, especially if people are sharing equipment or common areas. There are several ways to eliminate cross-contamination, including professional cleaning services. You might need to reevaluate your office setting to determine what is the safest option to reduce cross-contamination. One way to reduce cross-contamination is to allow only one person to use a specific phone. If this isn’t possible, try to have calls forwarded to cell phones to eliminate cross-contamination. Remember, a clean office is a healthy and safe office—both of which contribute to employee happiness and directly relate to your business’ revenue.
Prioritizing High Touch Surfaces
Effective office cleanings will ensure that high-touch surfaces don’t get lost in the shuffle. High touch areas are those where multiple people interact on a given day. They’re the most common place for germs, viruses, pathogens, and bacteria to build up and cause problems. While high-touch areas need to be cleaned and sanitized throughout the day, a good deep cleaning from your professional cleaning company will help ensure that you start the day off on the right foot.
Many common high-touch surfaces in an office setting are printers, faxes, computer accessories, doors, light switches, the office kitchen, or other office amenities that are shared amongst workers. While the best thing to do is to try and limit the number of people that use any given device, you should also try and ensure that they’re properly cleaned and sanitized throughout the day. Ineffectively cleaning these types of surfaces will proliferate the spread of bacteria and viruses like COVID-19, which can subsequently spread among your office in an increasingly exponential way. When this happens, you’ll experience high levels of employee absenteeism in addition to reduced productivity, lower employee engagement, and a decline in profit-generating behavior.
Do you Have an Ineffective Office Cleaning Solution in Place?
If you’re not currently using professional cleaning services that are certified in cleaning and sanitizing office facilities, you’re wasting money. Janitorial services don’t always go into the depth that you need to keep your facility healthy and safe for business. More often than not, the focus is on surface cleaning and things go untouched or ignored, especially if they don’t look dirty. Yet as we all know, some of the most dangerous and deadly things aren’t visible to the naked eye. To keep your office or any other facility safe and healthy, you need to choose a company that not only focuses on aesthetic cleanliness but pays attention to sanitization efforts on every surface—especially the areas that are frequently touched or passed through. If you find yourself in need of a more qualified cleaning company, don’t hesitate to contact Bee Line today.
Industry-Specific Differences
How you go about cleaning will depend on how many people you have in the office, how much everyone interacts with each other, and what your high-touch areas are. While it might take some time to settle into a new routine, the important thing is prioritizing your cleanliness. To make sure you’re adhering to the necessary steps in reopening your facility and cleaning it effectively, consider opting for a professional cleaning service that can banish COVID-19 and increase the safety of your facility.
At Bee Line, we always go above and beyond the standard professional cleaning practices to ensure that your facility is free from bacteria, pathogens, and viruses. Bee Line Support is a woman-owned company certified as a Woman Business Enterprise (WBE) by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. We were founded in 1997 and have been dedicated to empowering local Chicagoans to get access to the employment they deserve.
If you’re worried about the spread of COVID-19, pathogens, and healthcare-associated infections, in your facility, contact Bee Line today. We’re one of the only cleaning companies to use Black Light auditing to make sure that no surface is left untouched. We’re also a proud partner with ImageFIRST, meaning we have a strict process for cleaning and managing supplies. This process is unique, yet effective. It guarantees that our supplies are 99.9% clean of common pathogens, exceeding OSHA and CDC standards, and complying with Joint Commission requirements. Call 312-BEE-LINE today to learn more.
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