Hygiene for Your Business and Your Customers

We all know the importance of hygiene in personal interactions. Since you want to put your best foot forward in any professional situation, hygiene is even more important when you’re running a business. You want to be neat, clean and presentable, and your surroundings such as your office should also reflect a professional image. It goes without saying that hygiene just makes good business sense. 

In this age of the coronavirus, there’s another, more fundamental, reason for good hygiene. You don’t want to get sick, and you don’t want your customers getting sick. Good hygiene may not completely prevent coronavirus, but it can go a long way to making sure both you and your customers are safe. 

The first thing you’ll need to take into consideration is your work area, since that’s where the action takes place. Establish a thorough cleaning regimen at least once a week and stick to it. Make sure to post this cleaning schedule in a clear and obvious place in the office so everybody is on the same page and knows what your expectations for cleanliness are. Follow it up with regular reminders, both verbally and through email and through any other messaging mediums you commonly use. In addition to good cleaning habits, you also need to include good personal habits like frequently washing your hands and trying not to touch your face any more than necessary.

Why are cleanliness and hand washing effective? Well, one advantage of the coronavirus is that it’s not particularly hardy. While it can survive for a limited time on a wide variety of surfaces, it’s not very resistant to most basic cleaners. You don’t need an exotic cocktail of chemicals to kill it. Most commercially available cleaners in your local dollar store will do the job quite nicely. The tricky part is not so much killing the virus as it is making sure the cure isn’t worse than the disease. When searching out cleaners to use, pay careful attention to the warning labels. Some chemicals, while useful in and of themselves, can become noxious and even deadly when mixed with other chemicals. For example, bleach and ammonia together generate toxic chloramine vapor. If you have staff, be sure to check with them about any potential allergies they may have to certain cleaners. 

While you should clean your entire work area top to bottom, there are certain areas you’ll want to pay particular attention to and disinfect more often. As you might expect, those are the more commonly touched areas of the office. They include:

• The area around the reception desk 
• Any object that is frequently touched by multiple people, such as a signature pad and stylus
• Shared workstations
• Commonly used equipment such as printers.
• Door knobs or handles, both interior and exterior 
• The surfaces of common areas like a break room or a kitchenette 

Proper hygiene in a business setting isn’t just a matter of politeness. It’s good business. Household cleaners are cheap and available and cleaning requires far less effort than figuring out how to conduct business from your sickbed. While a rigorous cleaning regimen may not completely eliminate the threat of the virus, it can go a long way to helping your company function smoothly during the pandemic.