Fun fact for the day: your office keyboard is, oh, about 20,000x dirtier than your average toilet seat. Your telephone isn’t much better either, to be honest. In fact, according to WebMD the average office workers hands encounter 25,000 germs per square inch every single day. Grossed out yet? Us too. This blog is not meant to alarm, it’s more about educating in a new office world. In light of COVID-19 sweeping over the globe, proper cleaning in homes, grocery stores and offices has become more important than ever. Capital Choice has compiled a list of tips and tricks to maintain a clean office and keep employees as healthy as possible as you adjust to life back in the office.
Keep a Cleaning Log
Here at Capital Choice, we keep a log in our kitchen area for each person to date, time and initial when they clean all common areas. Cleaning areas are required to be cleaned every hour. If a cleaning log does not work for you, consider assigning each person a day to clean the common areas of the office every hour.
Our common spaces include all doorknobs and light switches, any shared appliances in the kitchen, and common workspaces such as our reception desk.
Disinfect After Every Customer
Do you have a transaction countertop? What about a card reader? Do your customers come through the same door? After each customer, be sure to disinfect anywhere they touched. Not only will this protect your employees, but it will also protect any future customers who visit throughout the day.
Remain in Offices or Personal Areas
Consider using apps such as Google Hangouts or Microsoft Teams to quickly chat with other members in the office. Avoid coming into close contact with another co-worker or their office.
Common Personal Items to Disinfect
Staplers and tape dispensers
Every hour, or after it has been touched by another employee, clean off the top, bottom and sides.
Keyboards
If your keyboard has painted letters, you may want to stay clear of sanitizer wipes as it could eventually rub off the letters. Instead, consider using a sanitizer aerosol and letting it dry completely.
Phones and/or headsets
Even if you don’t realize it, saliva regularly splatters off of our mouths when we talk. When speaking into a phone or headset. Use the same caution when cleaning your phone or headset as you would your keyboard. Be sure to wipe down any of the buttons, the speakers and the handheld phone itself.
Pencils and pens
If you have a transaction table with community pens, ensure that you are wiping them down after every customer. As for your own pens, wiping them down every hour, or after a co-worker has used them is ideal.
Chairs
Think of everything that you touch during the day. Then think about the arms of your chair. Do you fidget with them? Adjust them? Maybe a co-worker might sit in your chair to see something at your desk or computer. Try to wipe down your chair at least once a day with a simple anti-bacterial wipe.
Professional Cleaning Services
If possible, consider hiring a professional cleaning service to clean and disinfect your office every weekend. This should not be used as a replacement to daily cleaning, but a way to ensure that all the nooks and crannies receiving the deep cleaning they deserve!
Protective Shields
Capital Choice offers a wide range of protective shields for any parts of your office to serve as a barrier between coworkers or customers. They can be cut or sized however needed and come in a range of options. If interested, check out our website for more information!
All in all, the best way to ensure an office and the employees are clean and healthy is frequent handwashing. Any procedures taken further than that are going above and beyond to create the best workspace for your employees and customers!