How Filthy Is Your Office?
Posted by mymegablog on Thursday Sep 30, 2010 Under Huge CategoryIt is time for your meal break where would you normally choose to eat? Do you sit on a toilet seat or at your office desk?
I guess most of you would choose to eat at your office desk, wouldn’t you? From a bacterial cleanliness point of view it would be safer to eat on the toilet seat. Yes, I did actually just write that! Scientists from Arizona University took samples from 100 offices across the USA and found there were 400 times as much bacteria on your average desk as on the average toilet seat. Does your average Aberdeen office cleaner clean the important part of your office?
Right now you probably have a keyboard sitting in front of you. On average that keyboard will likely to have over 3,000 microbes in every square inch. Move that mouse sitting it and you will be potentially contacting over 1700 microbes per square inch. Concerned pick up that telephone to get new office cleaners and you will find you are putting over 25,000 microbes per square inch being placed beside your mouth and ears.
Alba Office Cleaning company visits a number of new companies in Aberdeen area each day. Many of them already have office cleaning contracts with other companies so are no longer shocked to discover the lack of cleaning standards an half done jobs.
On one of those visits an office manager was telling me how she regularly has to complain to the office cleaners about the odd paper clip that has been left for days on the floor. Why she did not pick it up herself the first day I still don’t know.
I asked her which was the most important job for the cleaner in the office around the desks. To be told to make sure that the bins were emptied and the floor was cleaned every day but office staff would clear their own desk so papers were not disturbed. My response was to ask her to tip her keyboard upside down over some clean paper and give it a thump with her hand. She was amazed at the amount of crumbs and dirt which came out of it. We then spoke about cleaning standards and setting priorities in the cleaning schedule before drawing up a new cleaning contract ensuring that the welfare and safety of staff using computers and telephones was also given full attention.
It is important that all staff and your visitors to your office get to see clean and tidy surroundings but we need to think not just about visual appearances (which are important) but about the welfare of staff working in offices.