According to Forbes, it's crucial to establish a healthy and hygienic workplace environment for your staff, customers, and visitors. With the advent of Covid-19, maintaining a healthy and hygienic workplace is mandatory. Failure to maintain hygiene standards in your workplace can cause severe effects on the workers, customers, and visitors who interact with your workplace. Over time, this can negatively impact your enterprise in several other ways. Therefore, you must find ways to enhance health and hygiene in your workplace.
Here are seven ways to improve health and hygiene in your workplace:
With Covid-19 still in existence, it's crucial for your security personnel to screen workers, visitors, and customers at the main entry point. You can get a thermo-gun to help screen and measure the temperature of anyone entering your business premises. Additionally, it might be a good idea to invest in a touchless time clock system to reduce contact and the spread of germs when clocking in and out.
It's also a good practice to ensure everyone entering your business premises uses a hand sanitizer at the entry point. By strategically placing hand sanitizers at entry points and informing all workers, customers, and visitors that it's compulsory to use, you'll encourage a culture of self-hygiene in your workplace.
Depending on your enterprise, you may be required to provide your staff with appropriate protective gear to protect themselves. In certain scenarios, the protective gears may serve the purpose of safeguarding your staff against heavy machinery.
In other circumstances, it may serve the purpose of safeguarding them against a medical risk, including Covid-19. Also, you must ensure that the protective clothing is in good and usable condition at all times.
Food remains often accounts for the largest share of the waste that causes unhealthy and unhygienic workplace conditions. Consequently, it'll be a great idea to assign specific zones where your staff can eat their food and where they can't.
Likewise, ensure you designate a place for those who like to smoke to do so. That way, you'll ensure that you maintain your office air clean and prevent the tobacco smell from clinging to your workplace furniture and walls. Ensure you notify your employees that breaking company policy regarding this matter will lead to serious repercussions.
Having many workers perform their tasks from one desk slows down work and encourages unhealthy and unhygienic behavior. That's why you must spread out your staff to prevent them from coming into direct contact frequently.
Developing an effective program to educate your staff about the importance of having a clean and healthy environment will ultimately improve health and hygiene in your workplace. You could incorporate such educational programs in your usual department or team meetings. Also, ensure you involve everyone to alleviate resistance and optimize the outcomes.
The absence of an effective waste disposal strategy can cause serious health and hygiene issues in your workplace environment. That's why you must set up a garbage disposal system in your workplace.
For instance, you can engage a professional cleaning company with a clear routine of emptying waste bins in your workplace and disposing of the waste. Moreover, your garbage disposal system should cater to the replacement of bin-liners in addition to the cleaning of the interior of the bin to get rid of bad smells.
Communal zones in a workplace are perfect for your staff to take a break from daily activities. Whatever foods and drinks they take while in these areas help to rejuvenate them to remain productive.
However, your staff must maintain good habits to keep these communal areas clean and hygienic. Food remnants left in the open can become the breeding ground for bacteria and germs. Also, you must ensure sinks in the communal areas are cleaned with detergent. Ultimately, ensuring the communal areas in your workplace are cleaned will improve health and hygiene standards in your workplace.
Ensuring high hygienic conditions in your workplace is one of the most important things you can do to keep your staff healthy and productive. Therefore, using these seven ways, you can work toward improving health and hygiene in your workplace for better productivity and profitability of your business.
