Regular, deep cleaning of your workplace is a great way to keep your employees safe and away from health hazards. Proper sanitation and waste management helps reduce the spread of disease, so it’s important to establish a means of consistent cleanliness. A commercial cleaner can thoroughly clean your facility, letting you and your employees focus on other daily tasks.
Examples of Workplace Health Hazards
In any place of business, there are a variety of maintenance duties that need to be done to keep you and your employees safe from health hazards. Below, we’ll explore a few health hazard examples.
Floor Hazards
Hardwood and Tile
Dirt, mud, dust, and other contaminants from the outside are tracked into your place of business every day. That’s why your hardwood and tile floors need to be regularly swept and mopped, and some surfaces might also require regular waxing and buffing. If not, your floors can become a health hazard, putting you and your employees at risk of slipping and falling.
Moreover, failure to regularly clean your floors can also lead to an increased rate of deterioration over time, meaning you might have to replace the floors sooner if you don’t take care of them properly.
Carpet
The carpets in your facility also need to be properly maintained. Much like your hardwood or tile floors, dirt, mud and dust are frequently tracked onto the carpets. But because carpets are fibrous, these small particles can get trapped in the carpet, possibly leading to respiratory issues, allergic reactions, or skin irritation if left unchecked.
To mitigate these potential issues, vacuum and shampoo your carpet regularly. This regular maintenance reduces the risk of negative health effects and keeps your carpet looking fresh, clean, and inviting.
Trash Hazards
Your facility’s trash must be taken out regularly. Unattended trash can become unsightly and smelly, and, left out or left to overflow, it can put you and your employees at risk. Over time, neglected trash receptacles can grow and harbor bacteria that can cause illness.
Moreover, as discarded food waste breaks down, it can form a liquid that can leak through the trashcan and spread across your flooring, resulting in a rather nasty slip-and-fall hazard on hardwood and tile floors, or in the staining and soiling of your carpet. For this reason, it’s important to frequently empty waste baskets and trash cans throughout your facility, and to have regularly scheduled intervals for trash pickup in order to reduce the frequency of workplace health hazards.
High-Touch Points
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the daily cleaning of high-touch areas may not be enough to mitigate the spread of infectious diseases. In many cases, disinfecting and sanitizing high touch areas multiple times throughout the day is one of the best ways to reduce the risk of spreading disease. Through regular, careful sanitizing of these areas, you can ensure that you and your employees are coming into contact with germs less often.
In order to mitigate the risk of spreading infectious diseases through this form of cross contamination, it’s necessary to routinely clean these high-touch areas with a commercial cleaner or alcohol-based sanitizer:
- Doorknobs and handles
- Light switches
- Stair rails
- Elevator buttons
- Desks
- Keyboards and phones
- Toilets, faucets, and sinks
Even outside the context of a pandemic, regularly cleaning these areas mitigates the spread of disease and reduces workplace health hazards.
Restroom Hazards
Although bathrooms only make up a small amount of your workplace, they account for a large percentage of a building’s soil and bacteria load. If not cleaned regularly, they can become a hotbed for bacteria and a major place of contamination within your facility. Regular, thorough restroom cleaning helps mitigate the risk of bacterial and microbial issues. By taking special care to clean toilets, sinks, and faucets—which are all high-touch areas—you can reduce the possibility of spreading disease or contaminants throughout the rest of your facility.
Routinely cleaning your facility’s restroom can also reduce the risk of slip and fall injuries from leaking sinks and toilets, since daily attention will be paid to those areas. It also provides an element of odor control, which adds to the overall feeling of cleanliness within a restroom.
Refilling soap, hand towels, and toilet paper gives people access to the materials that help keep the rest of the workplace clean, too.
How Can a Commercial Cleaning Service Help?
When you contract a commercial cleaner, you can be sure that workplace health hazards will be mitigated, and that your floors, restrooms, high-touch points, and trash will be taken care of regularly. This improves your business’s day-to-day efficiency, since you won’t have to take time out of your day to perform this level of deep cleaning yourself. With a commercial cleaning company, your workplace will consistently be clean, smell good, and be an inviting space for you, your employees, and customers. Their dedication to cleanliness will also help negate the negative health effects that come with an unclean workplace.
Carlson Offers Local Cleaning and Sanitation Solutions
For over 60 years, Carlson Building Maintenance has been providing quality cleaning services and commercial sanitation for businesses in Minnesota. We provide a full suite of in-house services, ranging from general floor and carpet cleaning to trash and waste management. We also provide high-touch point cleaning and specialty services like restroom cleaning.
Whether you run a grocery store, retail location, school, or warehouse, Carlson has the skills and qualifications to keep your workplace clean and safe from health hazards. Give us a call today if you need top-quality, thorough building cleaning and management.
