Follow these steps to maintain the health of your team and your clients.

By Holly Borrego, senior director of cleaning services

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Fall is here, which means flu and cold season is upon us. Disinfecting and hand-washing are critical in all aspects of life, but in the facilities services industry, they truly make an impact. As those tasked with keeping facilities clean, we must do our part to ensure our clients maintain their health to continue their standout service delivery.

Below are three tips for disinfecting the facilities you work in.

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  1. Hand-washing—This may sound obvious, but hand washing is absolutely vital and the most important way to maintain a healthy workspace. Training, reminding and reinforcing excellent hand washing helps reduce the spread of illness. We’ve created this simple guide for you to print and post at your site that will help you develop a culture of healthy hand washing. A quick reminder on the most effective way to wash your hands: First and foremost, wet your hands with running water—either warm or cold. Apply soap and lather. Wash hands for at least 20 seconds. Finally, dry your hands and try to turn off the faucet and open the door with a paper towel. This is an easy, yet incredibly effective way to keep your workers from spreading the flu or a cold around your office.
  2. Workplace Touchpoint Program—All workplaces have contact points that are constantly touched—light switches, door push bars or handles, hand railings, telephones, elevator button plates, kitchen fixtures, hard surfaces and more. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that adults put their hands to their faces an average 18.5 times per hour, presenting hundreds of opportunities each day to transfer illness-causing organisms into our bodies. Fortunately, knowing what surfaces hold the greatest risk for disease transmission allows us to put a proactive plan in place to implement effective cleaning practices. Dwell time—the number of minutes a product must be in contact with the surface and remain wet to ensure proper efficacy or effectiveness to kill viruses, bacteria or fungi—varies from one to 10 minutes. With this in mind, we recommend using Oxivir TB wipes, which require keeping a surface wet for 60 seconds while cleaning. This is a change from the typical spray-and-wipe-style cleaning we often see.
  3. Desk Kit—Create a desk kit that employees can place at their desks or take around with them. These kits should include a box of Kleenex and hand sanitizer products. Providing them with their own kit decreases the amount of potential germs people can get from each other using a community Kleenex box.

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As your facilities teams we strive to prevent the spread of illness every season through strong cleaning programs. The work we deliver on the front lines is so important—not just for the spaces but also for the people who work in them. Keeping workers safe, productive and healthy is important to us and your employer.