Keep Your Office Clean by Anticipating Changes

7/1/2020 (Permalink)

Take care of everyone by keeping your office clean

Keep your office clean by anticipating changes.  How so?  We’ll start by focusing on a proactive versus a reactive mentality.  For example, If you have guests over to watch a game, you don’t wait until the guests arrive and then check if you have enough snacks and drinks.  Rather, you take a proactive approach and prepare for the increase in people in your home.  Indeed, it takes a bit of proactive planning!  You don’t want to be reactive and wait until your party has started to address your guest’s needs.

In like manner, to keep your office clean, avoiding a reactive state is vital.  Many factors will affect the cleanliness of an office.  A little bit of planning can go a long way to maintaining a clean office.  Here are a few ideas that can help you stay ahead of the curb.

Factor 1:  Weather & Foot Traffic

Many businesses see an increase in foot traffic at predictable times of the year.  For example, the warm spring season brings about an army of landscapers!  This often leads to outside debris bring tracked indoors.  In addition, the change in weather often energizes employees for more outdoor breaks and lunch activities.  This means more outdoor-to-indoor foot traffic.  Thus, it’s important to proactively plan for these changes.  Here are a few ways that can help:

• Increase winter time floor cleaning activities with your janitorial vendor.
• Schedule professional carpet cleanings well in advance.
• Increase your janitorial vendor’s cleaning schedule.  For example, add Saturday’s during the spring season.

Winter can bring a whole new set of challenges.  Often, roads and walkways are covered in salt.  This can be tracked into your building and wreak havoc on hard floor surfaces.  It can even cause dangerous slipperiness.  Prepare for this winter change by adjusting your floor cleaning routine.  Do you typically wet mop the lobby twice a week as an example?  It might be best to increase this rotation.  It can also be helpful to machine auto-scrub large hard floor areas with heavy foot traffic.

Factor 2:  Construction Projects

Office building construction projects can greatly complicate office cleaning success.  If your facility is having remodeling or repairs performed, you can expect all types of debris!  Drywall dust, wood shavings, paint splatter, and all manner of dirt.  This is especially evident after large scale construction work.  If not prepared for, these projects can leave an office space covered in drywall dust, even in areas where the construction is not active.  The impact of this can be catastrophic for medical office environments, data centers, labs, and other critical environments in your building.

Be sure and notify your cleaning company of the upcoming construction.  Work with them to ensure a solid plan for the construction.  Even the smallest amount of construction can have an impact on customers and patrons.

Also, a reputable cleaning company that has experience handling post-construction cleaning as a specialized service could be necessary.  Such a cleaning company will know details that a less experienced company might not, such as:

• Post-construction cleaning requires several cleaning phases of the same area.
• Dust will continue to settle on surfaces many days after construction is complete.
• Special attention must be given to high reach areas, HVAC systems, computer rooms and more.

Your experienced janitorial vendor can help you with the planning and response to construction activities in your facility.

Factor 3: Cold & Flu Season

Every year thousands of people catch colds and the dreaded flu.  Many of these people will enter office spaces, bringing these contagious germs with them.  What can an office do to prepare for this?

Having the proper cleaning supplies and cleaning rotation is paramount.  There are many types of cleaning agents, but not all are designed to deal with cold and flu germs.  Make sure you have proper disinfecting and sanitizing cleaning agents.  Also, make sure they are used correctly.  Areas like lobby’s, bathroom touchpoints, lunchroom touchpoints, doorknobs and the like need to be consistently sanitized.

In addition, having good office environment hygiene is a major factor in keeping the spread of germs down.   Thus, consider training staff to the following:

• Washing hands regularly and thoroughly.
• Sanitizing shared office supplies and equipment.
• Keep disinfectant wipes around the office and in bathrooms.
• Encourage sick employees to stay home and not share germs!

Call SERVPRO North Highlands/ Rio Linda today!