Office Premises Cleaning is a Necessity and Not a Luxury
Clean offices directly contribute to workers’ efficiency and safety of all users. Office Cleaning should be accorded the seriousness it deserves to get the full potential of workers and satisfaction of all users. Whether cleanliness is achieved through professional cleaning services or by the maintenance department, it should be regular and timely. A dirty office implies that the products are of poor quality. Nobody can be convinced to buy products from an organization with a dirty office. No one can dare lodge in a hotel which is not clean. Even students will change school if cleanliness is not maintained on the premises. The misconception that office cleaning should be done when the dirt is visible or felt can lead to loss of productivity, health problems and damage to office machines.
The company’s brand can suffer an unimaginable loss when clients realize that the offices are not neat well cleaned. Such a bad reputation can lead to a massive decline in sales, high bills to repair the machines and frequent hospital visits. Therefore, the catalogue should be made to ensure the office premises are cleaned regularly.
Prompt attention is needed after every accidental contaminant. Workers need a healthy working atmosphere, machines need to be protected from dirt, soil and organic dirt need immediate removal from working services, and carpets need to be cleaned: Everything deserves to be clean, always. This is usually regardless of whether an upcoming organization or an already established economic giant. You probably will never go wrong having ensured a tidy surrounding.
Whether in medical centres’ offices, hotel & hospitality facilities or schools and colleges, for office premises to be hospitable these five elements must be removed regularly and well.
- Dust
Dust removal is synonymous with cleaning. Dust is the most common form of dirt in the office. It accumulates slowly, unseen and unheard. By the time it is recognized, it may have already caused damage to the electronic machines or other valuables. When enclosed in a tight place with right conditions, dust is combustible especially if there is a presence of any combustible gases, no matter how minute.
Many diseases can worsen in dusty conditions. Crowded places like classrooms are unbearable to live in if the atmosphere is dusty. The effects of dust in asthmatic people cannot be underestimated. The affected personnel can sue the company, school or hotel for damages. And if there is any evidence that the dusty condition worsened their states, it can lead to serious legal repercussions. Dust is the leading cause of death in occupational health. Regular removal of dust could save organizations a lot of time and money.
It is easier to control dust in some office premises than others. In such business as below, controlling dust in the offices should be left for professional cleaning services workers;
- Textile
- Flour processors and mills
- Carpentry
- Grain storages
- Construction sites
- Salon and barber shops
- Quarries and mining.
If the site of the office cannot be relocated somewhere safe, may be due to lack of space, dust management in offices is a tough job for an untrained person. When hotels and camping sites become so dusty, booking level will go down drastically, and it can be so hard to recover even after thorough cleaning has been done.
- Micro Organisms
Though unseen, microorganisms pose the most significant risk to health in dirty places than any other pollutant. They are the reason why medical centre cleaning services are so aseptic. Because the pathogenic microorganisms are mainly found in plenty in sick people, medical centre cleaning needs to be thorough and as aseptic as possible. In all offices, microorganisms can be found in plenty in toilets, washrooms, and restrooms.
Schools and colleges have a high concentration of microorganisms due to a high density of individuals visiting the toilets and washrooms. Proper cleaning is vital to prevent the outbreak of diseases in such places.
Hotels are frequented by all sorts of people. Some have undesirable toilet habits. If toilets are not cleaned well, and in time, visitors cannot come back again. Frankly, people fear germs contamination in hotels and restaurants than anywhere else.
Unlike other dirt’s cleaning methods, cleaning of places contaminated with germs is two-fold; to remove the dirt itself and to kill germs. Detergents together with disinfectants are necessary to clean such places. Since there are millions of germs in human waste, washrooms cleaning should do professionally especially in medical centres. Although not all microorganisms cause diseases in man, sterilization is mandatory on all infected services since no one can differentiate the pathogens from other microorganisms by looking at the dirt. This is especially so in hospitals and hotels.
Medical centre cleaning must not only be timely but also regular. Strong antimicrobial agents are always added to detergents used to clean tables, chairs, and floors in any medical office. This prevents spreading of diseases from a patient to a doctor or other patients. If regular and proper cleaning fails, nosocomial infections can spread in the whole hospital. It is a very repulsive idea to pick an illness from a health facility. Expensive court battles are inevitable in such scenarios, and the health facility can lose clients very fast.
All these can be prevented if professional cleaning services are sought to maintain regular and thorough removal of germs. Proper records should be kept by both the cleaners and the organization so that the type and source of germs can be studied to prevent disease outbreak in the future.
Germs can also quickly spread in any office setting because people can still work when they are sick, and some are carriers of bacteria which they do not affect them. Antiseptic detergents, therefore, should not be restricted to hospital setting but also in schools, colleges, and hotel cleaning. The effects of knee-jerk reaction in office cleaning and can lead to disease and underproduction. Workers will be satisfied and more efficient when they know their working environment is safe from disease-causing germs.
- Organic Matters
Dry dirt is not as dangerous as wet dirt. Organic dirt is even more dangerous because it is conducive for bacteria growth and multiplication. Germs feed on the organic matter especially the food leftovers. This will lead to foul smell and spread of infections. Hotels and schools are affected by organic matter than other premises. Their cleanliness reputation can be guided by proper cleaning. Although not all germs cause diseases in man, they all need to be prevented from multiplying by promptly removing any organic waste matter.
A piece of bread, when left unattended can rot and cause a foul smell. It can also attract all manner of bugs and insects. If this happens in an office, it can interfere with clients’ perception of the organization especially if they are new. Regular office cleaning is, therefore, a necessity to remove all food debris hidden in otherwise inaccessible places. Those snacks during breaks will cause fragments of food to fall to the floor and somehow find their way under the carpet. This is more common in offices frequented by many people like the school’s staff rooms.
School cleaning program must be regular and entire especially in the main offices. In hospital offices, the organic waste can be a good breeding ground for pathogenic microorganisms. Medical center cleaning services cannot afford to negate regular and aseptic office cleaning especially when dealing with pathogenic specimens.
Sputum on the doctor’s table left by a patient has to be removed aseptically and disposed of by hospitals pathological waste management. Professional cleaning service demands that all doors, chairs, floor, and beds in doctors’ offices be aseptically cleaned. Containers holding pathogenic materials have to be sterilized to prevent the spread of diseases. Medical Centre cleaning services is mandatory.
Failure to remove organic dirt in schools, hotels and hospital offices can cause the authorities to close those premises especially if there is evidence of spread of disease. Since many business deals are made in the office, many potential clients can be lost if the first impression they find in the organization is dirty and unkempt offices.
- Dumpiness
Dry dirt is easier to remove than a wet one. While dry dirt is inert, wet dirt is always changing. Biological changes are constantly making it unfit change from food to being a source of infection. A healthy biscuit crumb when it had absorbed enough vapours can rot and cause that foul smell and attract insects. School dining halls and hotels are especially affected by rotting food particles. Just a little amount of water vapour can cause dampness in the office, and by the time people sense dampness, it will have caused some damage.
As long as the temperature is above 22 degrees of Celsius, water vapour is inevitable in the office. Like dust, the effect of water vapour on machines and equipment is so gradual that it is hardly noticed until when the damage has already occurred. Regular cleaning can, therefore, save many damages. Water spill in inaccessible places must be removed promptly, and the place dried well. Regular and complete cleaning of all corners of the offices and the environment will ultimately prevent water from corroding and damaging important materials like furniture, walls, and posts.
It will, therefore, prevent expensive replacements of organization’s assets. Dumpiness can cause corrosion of metals if there is an element of saltiness. A fraction of a millimetre of erosion is what is needed to make the air conditioner malfunction or to destroy the computer. Since dumpiness is hard to see, a regular office cleaning is mandatory to prevent equipment damage and foul smell in office premises.
- Chemicals and Vapours
A clean surface does not only mean an absence of dirt but also the absence of dangerous chemicals and vapours. A spill of a dangerous chemical like acid is not only injurious to the health of personnel handling it but also to other materials like clothes and documents. The removal of such chemicals from surfaces will require professional cleaning services. Since there are plenty of dangerous chemicals in use of in office premises, a regular inspection should be part of the cleaning protocol.
Simple equipment like a refrigerator can cause a spill of dangerous liquid. If it was cleaned regularly, such breakages could have been noticed earlier and be prevented. Hotels and schools can be safe for the occupants when cleaning is done regularly to prevent a build-up of dangerous fumes in enclosed places. Carbon monoxide, for example, can start to build up in enclosed rooms near kitchens or car garages. If such rooms were cleaned regularly, the build-up of gases could not be as much.
Ink spills from printers can accumulate to high levels when left unattended for long. They can explode to eyes and cause damages. All office premises equipment and machines must, therefore, be cleaned and maintained regularly.
An office premise is only considered clean when it is free from physical dirt, dangerous chemicals and fumes, dumpiness and rotting organic materials. Cleanliness of a premise cannot be perceived by eyes and smell only. It is therefore essential to maintain an excellent record of the date and type of cleaning used so that improvements in cleaning can be achieved.
Removal of potential disease-causing germs is crucial. If premises are cleaned only when a smell or sight evidence dirt, danger will always be lurking in the background; a machine can fail due to accumulated dirt, an air conditioning machine can fail due to gleam in its bearing, dampness can corrode a metallic post unnoticed. Regular professional cleaning in all office premises can prevent all these.
Office premises cleaning is a vital undertaking to ensure that the organization is running well and the relationship between the organization and its clients is good. Unfortunately, many people take office premise cleaning for granted until the effect of their negligence becomes obvious.
Closing the business due to failure in cleaning may look far-fetched but neglecting this critical responsibility will inevitably lead to closure, especially in hotel and hospitality facilities. Medical Centre cleaning is even more vital to ensure infections do not spread from patients to personnel. Disease out breakages in a hospital is not only hard to contain but also it can damage the reputation irreparably.
