Tag Archive for: hygiene

What Hot Weather Does to Workplace Hygiene

Warm weather can lift everyone’s mood, but it also creates new challenges in the workplace. As temperatures rise, so does the importance of maintaining high hygiene standards.

Heat affects more than comfort. It can intensify unpleasant odours, encourage bacteria to multiply more quickly, and place extra pressure on shared spaces such as kitchens and washrooms. Without a consistent cleaning routine, these issues can escalate faster than many businesses realise.

Whether you manage an office, healthcare setting, retail store, school, warehouse, or communal building, professional cleaning is even more important during the summer months.

Higher Temperatures Can Increase Hygiene Risks

Warm environments provide better conditions for bacterial growth, particularly in areas where food, moisture, or waste are present.

Staff kitchens, dining areas, and washrooms require regular attention throughout the day. Food waste left in bins for too long, spills that are not cleaned promptly, or poorly maintained facilities can quickly compromise workplace cleanliness.

Routine cleaning helps reduce these risks by maintaining hygiene standards before problems develop.

Shared Kitchens Need More Frequent Attention

During the summer, workplace kitchens often become some of the busiest areas in the building. Staff are more likely to use fridges, prepare cold lunches, and refill water bottles throughout the day.

Without regular cleaning, kitchens can quickly become untidy.

Overflowing bins, marked worktops, sticky surfaces, and forgotten food all compromise hygiene and create unpleasant odours. These issues also affect how staff feel about their workplace.

Keeping kitchens clean and well maintained encourages responsible use and helps create a more comfortable environment.

Washrooms Work Harder in Hot Weather

Washrooms are another area where warmer temperatures can make hygiene issues more apparent.

Higher temperatures can intensify odours and increase the importance of keeping facilities clean, stocked, and well ventilated.

Regular cleaning ensures that toilets, sinks, floors, and touchpoints remain hygienic throughout the working day. It also reassures employees, visitors, and customers who expect high standards.

Dust and Air Quality Become More Noticeable

Summer often means windows and doors remain open for longer periods. While fresh air is welcome, it also allows more dust, pollen, and outdoor debris to enter the building.

These particles settle on desks, floors, windowsills, and other shared surfaces. If left untreated, they can degrade air quality and make workplaces feel less clean.

Routine vacuuming, dusting, and floor cleaning help remove this build-up before it becomes a problem.

Clean Workplaces Support Staff Wellbeing

A clean workplace is about more than appearance. It affects comfort, wellbeing, and productivity.

Staff tend to feel more at ease working in a space that is clean, orderly, and hygienic. Fresh kitchens promote proper breaks, while well-kept washrooms offer reassurance. Tidy communal areas foster a more positive environment.

These details become even more important in periods of hot weather.

Stay Ahead of Summer Hygiene Challenges

Hot weather brings different cleaning challenges, but they need not become workplace problems.

A structured contract cleaning programme helps maintain high hygiene standards throughout the summer, ensuring that kitchens, washrooms, shared spaces, and high-touch areas receive the attention they require.

At ServiceMaster Clean Contract Services, we help organisations across offices, healthcare settings, education, retail, warehouses, and communal buildings maintain clean, safe, and comfortable workplaces year-round.

Find your nearest ServiceMaster Clean Contract Services and discover how professional cleaning can help your workplace stay fresh, hygienic, and ready for the summer.

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Combatting more than just COVID this Christmas

How to minimise illnesses this winter by maintaining a clean and hygienic workplace. 

As the nights draw in and the winter months approach; as does regular cold and flu season. This is always a big concern for businesses across the globe, and due to a more vulnerable population through an overall lack of immunity to the flu, public health officials are preparing for an especially harsh winter.

During this time, it’s important to remain vigilant in protecting your workplace from the spread of diseases by continuing the good hygiene practices that most have fallen into during the pandemic. Whilst these will help to minimise staff sickness and absences, they can only do so much. Therefore, it is also important to take the necessary steps to keep your staff and workplace safe. This includes:

  • Staying home if you are feeling ill

Pre-COVID, most office-workers in the UK would likely admit to being guilty of maintaining a ‘stiff upper-lip’ and going into work despite a sniffle and a cough. And whilst the recent easing of government restrictions may make it feel safe to slip back into old habits, public health officials are urging people to steer clear of the workplace if they fall ill this winter, whether with COVID19 or something else.

  • Routinely cleaning surfaces

COVID19 and other viruses like the flu can potentially survive on surfaces for some time, ranging from a few hours, to a number of days. Luckily, both COVID and the influenza virus are fairly fragile. This means that typical cleaning and disinfecting practices should be enough to kill them, provided that this is done regularly.

  • Regularly disinfecting high-touch point areas

COVID19 and the flu can both be spread through touch, so be sure to be vigilant in cleaning any surfaces or objects in your office that are frequently come into contact with – such as desks, keyboards, chair arms, phones, door handles, taps, or bannisters. These areas should be cleaned up to three or four times a day if possible, depending on the busyness of your workplace.

  • Regularly removing waste

It may seem obvious, but you should be emptying and sanitising your bins and wastebaskets daily to get rid of items like tissues that can harbour bacteria and germs.

  • Vacuuming and cleaning carpets

Deep cleaning or vacuuming your carpets regularly helps reduce the spread of germs and also improves the indoor air quality in your office. This is especially important when dealing with airborne pathogens like COVID and influenza. You could also help this by clearing out your air-conditioning/heating systems.

If these practices feel difficult to maintain by yourself, why not get in touch with us and use ServiceMaster Clean for a regular and high quality office cleaning service? Trust us to help you get ready for winter this year, and keep your premises germ and virus free by letting us handle all your commercial janitorial needs.

Click here to find your nearest ServiceMaster Clean and learn more about our services today.

 

Another blog post you may be interested in reading is on promoting good hygiene in the workplace