One of the most important factors in maintaining cleanliness and safety in your building is the hand hygiene of the people in your building. Hand hygiene is incredibly powerful and effective in preventing cross-contamination and the transmission of disease. The cleaner the hands of everyone in the building, the less people will spread dirt and germs when they touch surfaces. Therefore, there is a real incentive to encourage excellent levels of hand hygiene of everyone in your building.
With the right solutions in place, you can improve cleaning operations, meet the needs of employees and visitors, and create a safer work environment. Clean smarter, not harder, with our seven tips below.
1. Make hand hygiene easy and convenient for restroom users
Make sure you have soap and paper towels readily available. Products should be easy to use and easy to access via proper dispenser placement. People can’t clean their hands well if they don’t have the right tools available. Studies have shown that having a small portion of the paper towel visible to patrons outside of the dispenser increases hand washing by 23%.1
2. Choose the proper hand hygiene systems for guests
Choose hygiene systems that help guests visiting the restroom get in and out effectively and efficiently. Providing the right tools can help guests do a good job with their hand hygiene and reduce the amount of time spent in front of the sink. We recommend providing systems that:
- Are touch-free or only allow you to touch the towel that you use for optimal hygiene.
- Dispense fast to allow people to quickly get in and out.
- Don’t require a learning curve or are difficult to understand. You don’t want guests confused whether they should push or pull the lever of the dispenser.
- Allow the user to take as much soap and as many towels as they need.
- Ensure soap and paper towels are always available to meet capacity demands. You can’t clean your hands well if you don’t have the tools you need.
3. Choose the proper hand hygiene systems for the cleaning staff
Choose hygiene systems that help the cleaning staff get their job done effectively and efficiently. It can be dangerous for the cleaning staff to be in the restroom, where they can potentially create crowding. Minimize your cleaning staff’s time spent making restrooms clean and tidy by selecting systems that:
- Have a seamless, easy to clean dispenser design.
- Can be refilled quickly before they are empty.
- Are easy to understand and maintain.
- Provide real-time information on cleaning needs, empowering staff to clean when and where it’s needed most. Technology helps ensure that dispensers are never empty and eliminates unnecessary restroom checks.
- Are high-capacity to save refilling time and serve more customers between cleaning rounds.
4. Increase the usage of sanitizers by proper placement
You can increase the usage of sanitizers by more than 50% by placing dispensers in optimal locations.2 Dispensers should be installed in the traffic flow, by the entrance of rooms, near the sink and in breakrooms to help prevent the spread of germs. Find dispenser placement recommendations on Tork Clean Care per your industry.
5. Encourage good hand hygiene with signage
Employees should wash their hands frequently and properly throughout the day. You can provide visual reinforcement on how to do that. Post signs near the sinks, restrooms, and other high-traffic areas in your building. Remind restroom users that the total time washing hands may be 40-60 seconds from start to finish, but the actual scrubbing time should be 20-30 seconds. To help keep track of the time, the World Health Organization shares the following reminder: Sing the song “Happy Birthday” twice.
6. Consider high-touch surfaces in common spaces
In addition to supporting everyone’s hygiene efforts, facility managers also need to consider high-touch surfaces in common areas. While COVID-19 is most commonly spread through airborne droplets, viruses can also spread on surfaces. Therefore, it is important to prioritize the frequent cleaning and disinfecting of high-touch surfaces such as doorknobs, tables, and chairs. Clean where it’s likely to be dirty and not where you’ve always cleaned. It’s also important to clean with the right tools so that your cleaning has a good effect. Use disposable or microfiber cloths that are very effective at lifting dirt and germs from the surface. Then be sure to change them often so that you’re removing dirt and germs, not spreading them.
7. Remember, it’s a team effort
It’s not only the cleaning staff that’s responsible for good hygiene. We all need to help each other do a good job cleaning in this difficult environment. Empower your visitors and staff to keep their area clean by providing disposable wipers that everyone can conveniently use when needed.
Now’s the time to upgrade your building with the right cleaning solutions. Invest in products that encourage good hand hygiene habits, allow for greater social distancing, and reduce the risk of runout. The Tork PeakServe® continuous hand towel system helps avoid run-outs and frees up staff time for cleaning. The faster dispensing serves visitors in 3 seconds, helping get people in and out of the restroom much faster. Meet the needs of your entire facility with Tork PeakServe.
Sources
1PubMed.gov: Increasing hand washing compliance with a simple visual cue
2PubMed.gov: Conspicuous vs customary location of hand hygiene agent dispensers on alcohol-based hand hygiene product usage in an intensive care unit