As most people spend one third of their daily lives at work, a clean and tidy workplace boosts employee productivity. Clean desks, well-furnished tables and chairs, bright floors, nicely fragrant interiors and hygienic bathrooms with great fresh air circulation creates a sense of willingness for employees to spend almost major part of their days at work.
Fortunately, many companies are paying attention the need for clean spaces and hence are opting for competent cleaning service professionals to handle everything related to hygienic matters inside an office.
During induction and on boarding process for new hires, it is very important that HR professionals emphasize on the need for cleanliness at workplaces, right from the way an employee presents himself at work, to the dressing style and basic hygiene, clean desks and drawers and so on. So the responsibility of maintaining clean workplaces does not solely rely on the expertise of a cleaning service agency.
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Here are 5 reasons on how clean workplaces can boost employee morale and enhance productivity at work:
Simple discomfort like dry eyes and throat, lethargy, chest tightness, headaches and watery eyes are caused by unhygienic workplaces, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Unclean spaces lead to employee discomfort at work, thus resulting in decreased typing speed, impact on logical reasoning abilities, arithmetic, memory and creative thinking skills are reduced by 2% to 6% because of dust collection and unkept floors, cabinet and office decor.
The impact on employee productivity would be difficult to avoid, if there is no a great effort to keep the workplace as hygienic as possible, thus resulting in more sick days and lower productivity levels of employees at work.
Have you ever heard that some items are dirtier than a toilet seat? According to Reader’s Digest report, 9 items surround you are super dirty and having a great amount of dangerous germs, including notebook and smartphone.
A notebook/computer keyboards have up to 100 units bacteria, while a phone has up to 140 units, even a tablet has around 600 units per swab of staphylococcus (causing a severe stomach sickness).
Meanwhile a toilet seat only has less than 20 units of such bacteria. Keeping your office equipment clean and tidy is vital for maintaining employee well-being. Also if equipments are dirty, and least maintained they can pose serious health issues or sometimes can endanger human health such as tragic incidents of fire breakout.
Jeffrey Campbell, PhD, in his study titled relationship of cleanliness and learning, surveyed 1,481 respondents and 88% of them complained of decrease in productivity, concentration and learning levels owing to unclean and dirty office places, unkept tables and shabby office decor.
A hygienic workplace could interest employees to stay long hours at work, even cook and eat lunch at the same place. On the contrary, a dingy workplace could impact employee morale, and create doubt to eat lunch in the cafeteria or drink coffee inside the office.
When office is dirty, employees tend to go out and seek for clean hygienic places for food consumption, this would result in employee’s wasting time over lunch breaks and loss of productive hours. While employees might return on time, others might take longer than usual to return back to their work desks. This commonly arising problem and a matter of everyday concern for employee physical well-being can be avoided by ensuring that workstations are clean, dusted and maintained regularly.
A hygienic, healthy and tidy office would impress clients and customers who visit the office for meetings. However, if an office is dirty, messy and dingy then customers/clients carry an impression that the company does not possess high standards of working, this affects trust and definitely business returns on a longer run.
It is undoubtedly clear that a hygienic workplace could ensure higher productivity and employee well-being at the same time. Therefore, HR professionals, managers and team leads play a pivotal role to create a cleanliness culture at work space to enhance employee productivity. A supervisor in charge to ensure the coffee machines are cleaned and functioning right, the bathroom is clean and hygienic and so on are maintained.
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