Workplace Deep Cleaning Tips From the Experts
A spring clean every now and then is as important in the workplace as it is in the home, especially now. After months of dormancy during lockdown, offices across the UK are slowly but surely becoming reinhabited as lockdown restrictions are loosened and more employees are able to enter their workplaces once again.
Desks and their contents have gathered dust, kitchens and washrooms have been out of use for months, and the overall look, feel and smell of unused offices nationwide isn’t optimal for hygienic, social distancing friendly working.
Rainbow International are decontamination and biohazard specialists, providing a full range of office cleaning and general deep cleaning services as well as full covid-19 decontamination. But here are a few things that you can do on top of these services, to help keep everyone clean and safe before you go back to work.
Disclaimer: These tips are not guaranteed to completely stop the spread of COVID-19 in your workplace. But they go toward helping to keep everyone hygienic and safe.
Room By Room Office Cleaning Tips
Cleaning Your Office Kitchen
Unless you have a designated staff room, the kitchen or canteen is the main shared area in any office, with germ covered handles, buttons and surfaces everywhere.
Before you go back to work, it’s best to have a professional cleaning company come in to provide a full kitchen clean. Thereafter, the best way to keep it clean and tidy is to have everyone do ‘their bit’.
Signage can help with this; making it humorous and/or branded will help people take notice, while having facilities close on hand also reminds people to use them. During social distancing measures, hand sanitiser and disinfectant wipes/spray should be available throughout the office, but after the measures are lifted, the kitchen should continue to have these facilities on hand all the time.
Keeping Desks Tidy
In any office there will be some people more messy than others, regardless of COVID-19. However during these measures, and thereafter, it’s important that individuals keep their own space just as clean (if not more so) than the communal space, this allows your office as a whole to stay as clean and tidy as possible.
Leading on from your one off deep clean, a ‘one mug per person’ policy across the office may seem extreme, but will stop the build up of used coffee and tea mugs which gather bacteria in between cleans which can spread to other items and areas. Doing ‘rounds’ of hot drinks should be discouraged, the same with sharing office snacks, at least until everything is back to normal.
Supplying everyone with hand sanitiser and/or wipes is an easy way to encourage day to day cleanliness. HSE States that “Alcohol preparations based on either gels or liquid hand rubs can offer a significant reduction in microbiological hand contamination.”
Meeting Room Cleanliness
As with other communal spaces, meeting rooms need to be kept tidy at all times. Wiping down tables, remote controls, computers, pointers etc before AND after use will help eliminate viruses and bacteria, but avoidance and distancing is key.
When you have office cleaners in, advise them of places and items that are used often so require special attention. Having sanitiser near entrances and exits, or asking people to use their own before they enter and exit rooms, helps keep each room independent from each other in terms of spread.
Office Toilets
Cleaning up after your own spills and mess is something that goes without saying in any toilet, however is even more important when you’re sharing that toilet with a lot of people that work together day in day out, for morale, respect and general hygiene.
Reminding staff to thoroughly wash their hands and sanitise surfaces they’ve touched and used can help both during and after lockdown.
Whether you have daily cleaners who work their way round your office, or a cleaning company who comes in once a week, these tips for deep cleaning your office can help make their lives easier, and your office environment much more tolerable, as well as hygienic and guidance abiding.
Click for information on deep cleaning or get in touch with a member of our team to discuss your requirements and get the experts in, before opening your doors safely once more to staff and customers.