The sanitary conditions of your place of work could be impacting you more than you realize. Here are four indicators to keep an eye out for that might make you want to look into hiring a commercial cleaning service in your office.
Indication #1: Employees Calling in Sick
If full time employees call in sick to work, you may rejoice that they are not infecting the work place with their germs. However, you may want to consider that it is likely that they got sick in the first place from the office. The average working adult spends about 36% of their day at their work place; if workers are getting sick, it’s likely that they are picking up germs at the office. In a survey of 1,000 office workers, the Office Cleanliness Monitor found 64% of workers saw a correspondence between the cleanliness of the office and the amount of times employees called in sick. As employees work longer hours but the cleaning does not increase, ultimately the likelihood of unsanitary conditions rises. Affordable office cleaning options could help offset the cost to businesses from employees frequently calling in sick.
Indication #2: Eating at Work
At 85%, the vast majority of workers eat at their office space. Eating at desks not only creates a mess as food inevitably spills and creates crumbs, but eating at the desk can expose workers to up to 400 times as much dangerous bacteria as a toilet seat. Because people don’t often consider how dirty things like their keyboard or mouse can be, these items often go uncleaned. Commercial cleaning services like janitorial services know the hot spots for germs and can help eradicate the germs in their favorite hiding places. It’s unlikely that people will stop eating on the job, so if your employees routinely work through lunch, its a good idea to look into commercial cleaning to keep the bacteria at bay.
Indication #3: Suspiciously Quick Bathroom Breaks
Unfortunately, almost half of workers have witnessed one of their co-workers leave the office bathroom without washing their hands. Even for companies with strict hand-washing policies, an uncomfortable amount of workers continue to take this germ-spreading short cut. Although it is still unpleasant, regular commercial cleaning can target areas such as bathroom door knobs that hand washing shirkers touch after using the bathroom, leading to a safer and cleaner work environment.
Indication #4: Working Through Allergy, Cold and Flu Seasons
There are so many times when workers are under the weather, but still come into work. It simply isn’t practical to miss work for a mild cold or some allergy symptoms. However, just because the sickness is manageable doesn’t mean that germs aren’t spread. 22% of workers admit to seeing a co-worker sneeze, cough or yawn without covering their mouth almost every day. The rapid force of one unprotected sneeze contains enough power to be propelled through the air and could even reach ventilation systems and subsequently spread throughout an entire office.
If you have witnessed any of these indicators in your place of work, hiring an office cleaning company might be an important step in waging a war against rampant germs.
