As the situation surrounding COVID-19 continues across the country, personal hygiene and sanitary environments are more important now than ever before. Though most of America is currently working from home, employers must still be conscious of what work conditions will need to be like once everyone starts returning to the office. When this happens, workers must be extra aware of workplace hygiene and what they can do to keep themselves healthy. Learn how to improve the sanitary health of your workplace and make it a safe one to return to.
Implement an Official Hygiene Policy
Providing your staff with a formal hygiene policy is the crucial first step in improving the overall sanitary health of a workplace environment. By establishing these standards you’re not only letting them know that you’re taking the matter seriously, but that you’re also giving them a set of guidelines to follow. This plan could include procedures as basic as frequently washing your hands or implementing more advanced cleaning measures around desks and eating areas. But no matter the strategy, it’s important to member that your expectations should be realistic for your workers as well as you.
Designate Specific Areas for Eating
It’s commonly known that food scraps carry a variety of germs and can end up making others sick. Because of this, it’s often recommended that employers set specific areas where their employees can eat their lunches. This minimizes the amount of contact others have with leftover food particles and makes it easier to disinfect effectively after the fact. As an additional measure, you could also purchase an office water dispenser to limit exposure to unsanitary surfaces such as water fountains and sinks.
Allow Employees to Take Sick Days
While this might seem like an obvious step in preventing illness in your office, many employees still come to work while they’re sick. Whether it’s because they don’t want to fall behind on work or feel pressured by management to show up anyway, this puts everyone in the office at risk. So it’s crucial that you encourage your employees to stay home when they aren’t feeling well to not only keep them safe, but prevent the spread of germs throughout the rest of the office.
Provide the Necessary Cleaning Products
If you’re going to require your employees to keep their work stations clean, you need to make sure you’re supplying them with the resources to do so. Otherwise, they could easily fall back into unsanitary habits and further promote the spread of germs. As such, you’ll need to accumulate a reliable stock of supplies, like hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, and tissues, to ensure that you have these items when your workers need them. Keeping them available at all times will also further encourage employees to clean their desks more often and be more conscious of the germs they could be spreading.