There is no escaping COVID-19. With the spread of coronavirus still being a major concern in many areas, workplace hygiene has never been so important. This is especially true in any of the shared spaces that you might come into contact with a lot of other people.

A shared office space is a great example of a place where a virus such as the coronavirus could spread particularly quickly if simple hygiene rules are not adhered to at all times.  

With this in mind, it is therefore essential that everyone in your office or workplace works together to maintain the very highest level of cleanliness within the work environment, especially in the areas that are shared.

Not only will a high level of cleanliness in the workplace helo to lower the chances of the virus spreading, which in turn reduces staff sickness rates, but it also creates a less stressful and more harmonious workplace. 

It can be very demotivating to work in a place that is very messy and dirty, especially if you have to come into your workplace and deal with rubbish and clutter everywhere. This could be particularly problematic when it comes to employees worrying about how COVID-19 might spread throughout the workplace. 

It is therefore essential that you create a plan for how you will keep your office clean and tidy at all times. 

In this article, we’ll discuss how you can plan to keep your workplace as clean and tidy as possible and to reduce the chances of the virus spreading.

Provide Hand Sanitizer 

One of the ways that you can slow the spread of coronavirus or prevent it completely in your workplace is to sanitize your hands often. Providing plenty of hand sanitizer for your employees is essential. 

Set up hand sanitizer stations throughout the workplace so that your team can ensure their hands are clean at all times. 

Identify Hotspots 

One of the most important things to do when thinking about reducing the spread of the infection in your workplace is to identify the areas that are the greatest hotspots for germs in your office and communal spaces. 

Anything that multiple people touch in a day should be a concern. These will include printers, photocopiers, microwaves, taps, door handles and more. 

If possible, remove any items that you don’t need from use. This will minimize the amount of cleaning that you will need to do on a daily basis. 

Around any of these potential hotspots, you should place hand sanitizers and cleaning materials. Your team should be encouraged to wash or clean their hands before and after touching anything and to wipe down and surfaces before and after use. 

Encourage Employees To Regularly Clean Their Own Desks

Personal spaces within the office will harbour a lot of germs, and these are potentially the places where coronavirus may lurk. 

Encourage each and every team member to clean their own desk multiple times each day. Provide your employees with hand sanitizer and wipes for each and every employee so that they can personally take responsibility for cleaning their own workstations themselves. 

When cleaning personal workspaces, employees need to pay attention to areas such as telephones, computer mice, mousemats, and keyboards. These will all get touched a lot throughout the day and may have picked up a lot of germs.

Increase The Amount Of Cleaning That You Do 

During the coronavirus pandemic, it is essential that you increase the amount of cleaning that you do. Where an area is cleaned weekly, it will now need to be cleaned daily. Where something was cleaned daily, it will now need to be cleaned several times each day. 

Pay attention to high-traffic areas. These will need to be cleaned with a much greater frequency than usual. You may wish to clean these areas several times each day. 

Areas such as door handles, rails, dispensers and water coolers are all going to get touched frequently. By cleaning these down as often as possible, you will be able to minimize the chances of any microbes building up or spreading in these areas. 

Create A Set Of Rules

If you want your employees to keep their office space as clean and tidy as possible, then you will need to create and implement a series of rules which all employees must follow. This will include disposing of all of their rubbish in the correct bins which you will need to provide. 

You will need to separate out everything into the relevant recycling bins. If there is a communal kitchen space, your employees will need to take responsibility for cleaning any cups, plates, or utensils that they have used. Nobody else should even touch a used utensil or piece of crockery. 

All food waste must be cleared away and safely disposed of. Once a bin is full, it should be immediately emptied and a new bin bag put in place. 

If everyone has to abide by the same set of rules, then this is a fair system which allows all of the office users to use the office and communal spaces without having to deal with each others clutter and mess everywhere. 

During COVID-19 measures it is even more essential that employees take care of cleaning up after themselves. 

Create A Cleaning Roster 

Unless you have a dedicated cleaner in your workplace, then it should be every member of your team’s responsibility to clean the office. If this is the case, then you should create a roster system for making sure the whole office is cleaned from top to bottom each day. 

One day, someone may be responsible for vacuuming the office, the next day the same person may be responsible for mopping the floors or cleaning the windows. 

If jobs are passed back and forth between employees, then everyone will get to do the same tasks on different days. This is the fairest way of approaching cleaning your office. Using this system will also encourage your employees to start taking more responsibility for cleaning up after themselves as they go. 

During the covid-19 pandemic, it is essential that areas of your office are disinfected. Desks, phones, computers, printers, and filing cabinets that are in communal use should be sanitized regularly. 

Hire A Professional Cleaner  

Having a clean office is no longer just a matter of hygiene and pride. Under the current circumstances, it could make the difference between life or death. Slowing the spread of the virus is something that should be on everyone’s minds. 

If you want a full and thorough clean of your office on a regular basis, then you may wish to hire commercial cleaning services to come and clean your offices as often as you need them. 

You can ask your cleaner if they would be able to handle a range of different cleaning duties including emptying bins, vacuuming the floors, wiping down furniture and other assorted cleaning tasks. You may want them to do a regular deep cleaning on a rolling basis, For example, on one week you may want the cleaners to clean the windows, whereas on another week they may clean the skirting boards. 

Cleaning Bathrooms

Areas such as the toilets will need to be cleaned on a very regular basis. If you have multiple toilets or urinals close together, you may need to think about limiting the use of certain ones anyway to ensure your bathroom spaces are set up in line with social distancing regulations. 

Use an hourly checking system to ensure the toilets are checked and cleaned on a regular basis. 

Reduce The Need For Cleaning 

Focus on reducing people’s contact with the various surfaces and objects in your workplace rather than relying on cleaning after contact has taken place. 

Think about ways that you can limit the movement of people around your workplace and to reduce the number of things that people need to touch. 

You could do this by:

• Allocating specific work areas, or vehicles to specific people. 
• Creating groups that will be able to work independently on their own tasks. 
• Closing off any unused workstations and putting away and items that are not needed. 
• Propping open any doors to avoid having to touch any door handles. This should exclude shutting fire doors as these need to be kept closed at all times.  
• Using automatic sensors on doors so that they can be opened without touch.
• Issuing door hooks or claws to all of your employees so that they don’t have to touch the door handle
• Reducing the available equipment so that you can reduce the amount that needs to be cleaned 

Conclusion 

Cleaning your workplace should become a priority during the covid-19 pandemic. The threat looks set to be with us for a long time, so the sooner you make these measures into a habit the better. 

Apply a thorough common sense approach to cleaning and review all areas of your premises to see how they need to be cleaned from now on.