Offices are, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of Britain’s most common workplaces. With the days of COVID-19 now long past, our workspaces have quickly become hives of activity, with meetings, projects and coffee breaks now restored to regular appearances in offices country-wide.
However, an unintended side-effect of that is more contact with others. In some aspects, that’s great – socialising and contact with others is often the ideal tonic to the isolation many of us felt during the lockdowns that punctuated 2020 and 2021. That’s soured, however, by the rampant rates of illness and germ transmission that comes alongside that.
We’ll be peeling back the grimy curtain around office hygiene in our latest exposé. It’s the latest in a long string of articles here at Vanguard Cleaning, all of which are aimed at uncovering those hidden harbours of germs, viruses and pathogens. Take our report on factory cleaning as a stellar example – an area particularly prone to infectious contaminants.
Join us as we delve into the disgusting and often shocking revelations behind office cleanliness, as well as what the right course of action is to keep your office clean, safe and – most importantly – occupied.
We’ve plumbed the depths of grime to uncover just 7 of the most concerning statistics on office hygiene, from dirty desks and crusty keyboards to microscopic horrors on the handles.
As one of the most common pieces of commercial furniture, desks are one of the most frequently touched surfaces in any office. It stands to reason that they’d have some germs, but the sheer extent of that is truly shocking.
Recent research places that at an eye-watering 400 times higher than your average toilet seat, with visualisations from Printerland highlighting just how much of an issue the average desk faces. Not all areas see an even share of those pathogens, however, and some of the most commonly used areas of your workspace see a disproportionate amount of germs.
Your office phone, for instance, is the biggest magnet for microbes, with the research finding 25,127 germs per square inch. Understandably so – customer-facing roles like Sales and Admin are likely to be on and off their phones, and germs spread far quicker than many of us ever realise.
The humble chair takes second place among the biggest office germ hotspots, with an alarming 21,000 germs per square inch. Your desk space comes in third, closely mirroring those figures with 20,961 germs per square inch.
All of these combine to create an environment that can quickly become a breeding ground for microscopic nasties. We all spend the bulk of our working days at a desk, and without a thorough cleaning schedule to support the ongoing cleanliness of workspaces, you’ll run the risk of an illness-stricken workforce and unhygienic workspaces.
With regular professional cleaning, you can help mitigate the buildup of germs, creating a cleaner and healthier space for anyone entering the office space. A simple cleaning task like this can easily be neglected, but with Vanguard’s office cleaning solutions, you can rest easy knowing that our staff conduct nothing but the best cleaning standards every time.
You don’t have to be ultra-health-conscious to be concerned about washing your hands. Whether we’re out and about, at home or at work, there are few things more important when it comes to the spread of bacteria than washing your hands. Not only does it build a protective layer around your skin, it’s also essential for keeping others safe.
According to new data from the YouGov think tank, however, that seems to fall by the wayside, especially for men. Their survey makes for quite repulsive reading, with the headline statistic being the title of this section – around 17% of men don’t always wash their hands after pooing at work. For women, that’s much lower at 10%, but still extremely concerning.
It’s worse when we consider urinating as well, with around 28% (or more than 1 in every 4) of men not washing their hands each time they wee. For women, that dips drastically, with 15% not washing their hands after each toilet break.
One of the major dangers here stems from the presence of Escherichia coli (usually just called E. coli), which is found in the microscopic particles of faeces we carry on our hands when we don’t wash post-toilet break. You’re likely familiar with the E. coli bacteria, but given its unpleasant effects, it bears repeating here.
An effective washroom cleaning strategy should be employed here, to keep those germs at bay before they can ever become more of an issue, but it’s also absolutely vital that translates across to wider office cleaning too.
Our keyboards are very rarely apart from our desks. For laptops – often the first port of call for more modern businesses – that’s especially true, but even the more traditional mouse and keyboard setup require some TLC. Of course, there’s good reasoning behind that, and it makes for less-than-pleasant reading.
According to that same research from Printerland we touched on earlier, your average keyboard has around 3,295 germs per square inch – concerning given that we often touch the full length and breadth of it. Shared keyboards are likely to be even worse, with multiple contributors to that putrid petri dish.
Under the microscope, there are even more worries. Researchers at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois discovered that 2 chemically resistant and highly harmful bacteria (namely MRSA and VRE) can live for up to 24 hours on an improperly cleaned keyboard.
That’s not even considering many of the more common illnesses, like colds, flu and norovirus, which are often far more transmissible and common, especially during the winter months. Couple that with the growing tendency to eat lunch at our desks – affectionately referred to as “al desko” – and it becomes all too clear where and why those bacteria start to breed.
Food crumbs, skin cells, hairs and saliva particles all blend to create a potent cocktail of contamination, and with the warmth our hands naturally produce, it presents the ideal breeding ground for some of the UK’s most common infections. There are options available, however, and a professional clean is the ideal choice.
Able to quickly quash an infection outbreak, as well as keep daily cleaning under control, implementing a regular schedule only seeks to restore the bacterial balance to your office. That’s especially true of companies like us here at Vanguard, where our unparalleled experience in infection control puts us in the ideal position to keep your workspace working.
While we often imagine our coffee mug to be relatively sanitary compared to the rest of our workspace, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s easy to assume the boiling water we use for brews is enough to keep it clean, but it’s the residual build-up that can and does cause concern.
Of course, we’re unlikely to leave coffee-stained mugs for too long before giving them a scrub in the office kitchen, but research shows that it’s only after the fact that we start to see some of the biggest issues on a microscopic scale. Many office sponges harbour way, way more bacteria than you’d expect.
Research from the microbiology department at the University of Arizona found an array of different contaminants on workplace mugs after they’ve been washed, from food-borne pathogens to particles of faeces. It’s grim reading, but the solution is relatively simple.
We’d echo the words of other experts in the industry in recommending that you take it home to wash with your own sponges and equipment or run it through a dishwasher if your office has one. The heated wash and dry cycle helps eliminate persistent bacteria, as well as clean the handle and outer surface – so often forgotten about.
We’ve all heard the horror stories of office fridge mishaps. Mouldy Tupperware filled with long-forgotten foods, spoiled pints of milk and even strong-smelling fish dishes all contribute towards the picture we’ve no doubt built around the nightmare conditions of your average office refrigerator.
However, what we might not think about quite as much is the overall cleanliness of the workplace fridge. While modern fridges maintain their temperature better than ever before, bacteria is a persistent threat, and can even make its home among the chilled surroundings of the office fridge.
Bacterium like listeria – which causes the infection listeriosis – thrive in colder conditions, especially those provided by a refrigerator. It’s found in many of the common workplace foods, including sushi, cooked meats, and pre-prepared sandwiches and fruit boxes – all staples of the ever-popular supermarket meal deal.
It gets worse when we look at the statistics around how often office fridges are cleaned. Recent data places the average cleaning frequency at around once every 2 – 3 months, but a shocking 22% of workplaces only clean their fridge out once or twice a year, giving listeria plenty of time to take root.
Once it has, it can quickly migrate to multiple different foodstuffs, spreading the infection as quickly and silently as it came about. Mercifully, the infection isn’t usually serious, causing mild symptoms in most cases, but it can have more pronounced and devastating effects on pregnant women, the elderly, and those with weakened or compromised immune systems.
More regular fridge cleans are the way forward, of course, and while a professional cleaning service can alleviate those worries in one fell swoop, you can put preventative measures in place. Simply asking people to clear up after themselves is so often enough, but a polite notice or company-wide email can go a long way too.
While we’ve focused primarily on the preventative measures you can put into place to keep office sickness at bay, it’s also worth looking at the aftereffects of infections and bacteria. That naturally means looking at the financial impacts that can have, and suffice it to say that they’re almost as shocking as some of the more grim findings.
The IPPR’s latest report examines that in more detail. The cost of office sickness has risen by £30 billion in the last 5 years alone, but only 1/6th of that is attributed to actual sick pay, with the remaining £25 billion the cost of a sluggish, less productive workplace that’s afflicted with illness.
A deeper dive into data from the Labour Force Survey exposes the true extent of workplace illnesses, with an estimated 185.6 million days lost through sickness-related absence – its highest rate since records began.
Breaking that down even further, an estimated 23.9% of those days were lost due to minor illnesses – think colds, flu and other seasonal sickness bugs. A further 5.1% were related to “gastrointestinal issues”, so often caused by some of the more virulent strains we can find on our desks.
For the health and safety of your employees, as well as your business, minimising the need for sick days is essential. Even a common cold can result in underproductivity, so mitigating the risk of illnesses spreading in the office is crucial to maximising office productivity and keeping your staff healthy.
The spread of common coughs and colds is all too common in the office, working in proximity and sharing resources. Microbes which cause these colds can survive for long periods, meaning a longer time for them to be picked up and transferred to other surfaces around the office.
Influenza microbes can live for 60 hours, meaning that, although we might have recovered from the latest bout of sneezes and coughs, there’s still the persistent risk of infection. That’s especially important for any offices that might see more vulnerable visitors, such as local government premises, schools or medical offices.
That’s a comparatively short half-life, too, with other bacteria seeing a much longer and concerning lifespan. That includes incredibly harmful bacteria such as Hepatitis, which has been found to live on surfaces for up to 160 hours.
That pales in comparison to E.coli, which has been proven to survive for almost a year and a half under the right conditions – worrying, to say the least, especially given its prevalence in some of the more grimy corners of the office.
The ability of microbes to survive for such an extended period means that proactive cleaning measures are essential to keeping a safe office space. In addition to good hand hygiene practices, the best way to protect your office from these outbreaks is with regular professional cleaning.
Cleaning your office is important not only in maintaining a professional image but also in keeping your office healthy and fully staffed. With Vanguard, you’ll safeguard your employees against harmful viruses, receiving an outstanding service every time. With our cost-effective services and site-specific schedules, Vanguard always works with you in mind.
Whether it’s a regular cleaning service you’re after or a more concentrated deep cleaning service, Vanguard has a range of quality services on offer. From those oft-neglected corners of the office to a particularly problematic fridge, we’re able to address every aspect of your office cleanliness and minimise those sickness-related absences.
Get in touch today to discuss how we can create a schedule that works around you, and to receive your free, no-obligation quotation.
