As we approach the end of the year, the media is compelled to remind us of what occurred over the past 12 months and predict what will happen in the next 12. We are inundated with year-in-review highlights including lists of “The Best” and “The Worst” of 2011. This is immediately followed by tips, trends and predictions for 2012.

While I don’t have any earth shattering summaries or fortune telling powers to share, I do know that as we close out 2011, I’m particularly grateful for my exceptional employees. This dedicated team of trustworthy, hard-working men and women spend countless evenings away from their families to do a job many wouldn’t consider undertaking.

Janitorial service work is often an invisible job; the work frequently taken for granted.

These few days between the Christmas/Hanukah holiday and the New Year are generally a quiet time for businesses. When things slow it’s easier to take a minute to appreciate the work of your janitorial staff. If I had a list of “The Best of 2011,” the staff of TS Maintenance would be on top. They truly are the best in the business.

Happy New Year to the families of TS Maintenance and to all janitorial service workers.

The holidays inevitable bring more food into the workplace. Not just the typical morning doughnuts or staff lunch, but savory and sweet snacks are available throughout the day. With the increase of readily available food in your workplace, don’t be surprised if you have evening visitors other than your janitorial staff.

Years ago, I had a client who had the usual holiday foods in the office. Snacks were often left out in the community kitchen in the evening. My staff regularly discarded left-over food and disposed of it properly.
One particular employee kept additional snacks in the bottom drawer of her desk. Unbeknownst to her fellow co-workers, this drawer contained open bags of chips, pretzels, chocolates, licorice and other tasty treats.

For weeks, this drawer had been attracting the attention of 4-legged critters who ventured out in the evening. With the abundance of holiday food throughout the office, these visitors became more brazen and eventually found their way into the drawer.

Entry into this desk drawer was not easy. The desk was pushed against the wall that contained electrical outlets. Behind the desk was the usual mess of electrical wires, computer cables, and phone lines. One morning, as people arrived to their desks and started their workday, someone smelt a faint scent of smoke. Initially, they thought that the computers were overheating but soon realized a small fire had started behind the desk with the drawer full of food.

The 4-legged visitors had chewed through electrical cords to get to the food inside the drawer. These exposed electrical wires started the fire when the computers were turned on. Fortunately, the fire was quickly extinguished and no one was hurt.

The moral of the story is: keep your snacks in the kitchen with the other holiday foods. Let your janitorial staff be the only evening visitors to your office.

I’m often asked by clients and prospective clients, “How frequently should we receive professional janitorial services?”  There is no correct answer to this question because it varies by the type of facility, the use, and the daily wear and tear.  Obviously, the more frequently the location is serviced, the cleaner the environment.

In between professional cleanings, one of the best ways to keep your work space clean is by installing door mats.  The simple act of wiping your feet before entering a building will significantly reduce the amount of dirt that is tracked inside.

In 1991, the EPA conducted a study that showed a 50% decrease in the amount lead and dust that was tracked into a home when a door mat was present.   The results of “The Door Mat” study hold true for all types of properties (not just homes).  Whether your work space is an office building, school, doctor’s office or restaurant, the benefits of using a door mat are tremendous.  Think of all the things that could be on the bottom of your shoes:  pesticides, cigarette ash, dust mites, animal droppings, fertilizers, not to mention mud and moisture.  The use of door mats reduces the amount of outdoor contaminants that get  carried inside on your shoes.

The larger the door mat, the better.  Ideally, an exterior door mat should cover two or three strides.  An additional interior
door mat will further keep the presence of dirt to a minimum by capturing and holding any remaining particles from the bottom of shoes.  This double door mat strategy will help you limit the unnecessary dirt that clings to shoes, and reduce the amount of dirt tracked through your environment.
By taking a few simple steps you can help maintain a clean environment.  If that doesn’t work, then you may want to consider increasing the frequency of your professional janitorial service!

In 1847, in an effort to reduce his hospital’s mortality rate, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis asked medical students who worked on cadavers in anatomy class to wash their hands before working with live patients. He observed a 500 percent drop in deaths. Incredulously, despite the sharing of these findings, it took the medical industry 50 years to adopt the practice of hand washing between patients. It even goes against the Hippocratic Oath, established in the 4th century BC: Above all, do no harm.

Today washing up between patients is standard practice in healthcare, yet the struggle to encourage the general public to wash their hands in order to remove harmful pathogenic bacteria remains a challenge. Several years ago the American Society for Microbiology conducted an experiment to find out how many people who said they washed their hands after using a public restroom actually did so, and discovered that only two-thirds were following through. The rest were potentially spreading illnesses like diarrhea, dysentery and hepatitis A.

But the risks of poor hand hygiene don’t stop in the restroom. Microbes carrying cold and influenza can lurk for days on door handles, light switches, desks and computer keyboards. Then one touch to the nose or mouth, and a person is ill. It’s a vicious cycle that can quickly escalate to an epidemic. Symptoms can be hard on a healthy adult, but for children, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems, they can be deadly, leading to flu and pneumonia, which together are the eighth-leading cause of death in America.

These facts present an opportunity for jan/san distributors to bring them to their customers’ attention, improve their bottom lines, and be seen as valuable business partners. Helping clients design systems and specify products that will help protect occupants and employees — and in turn families and communities — from disease, can reduce absenteeism and presenteeism (sick people coming to work), increase productivity, protect funding in schools and help contain escalating group health insurance premiums.

Creating The Right Environment

Aside from having hand sanitizer dispensers at doorways and on desks, the best opportunity to remove harmful microbes from hands is in the restroom, which is best achieved through a combination of a clean appearance, appealing products, the right equipment and appropriate signage.

The cleaner the restroom (even the perception of clean) can mean the difference between building occupants washing their hands with soap for the 15 seconds recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, or bolting out the door. Since people are more apt to spend time washing and drying their hands when the restroom feels healthful and appealing, creating that image is vital — especially during first impressions when people establish the mindsets and habits they’ll carry forward on a daily basis.