Ideas to help your staff avoid Coronavirus Blog

May 14 2020 15:21

As with any situation, clear, helpful and accurate information is always useful. Here we offer some simple guidance to help you minimise risk to your staff and visitors of coronavirus infections.

Hand-washing provisions;

In a recent survey (by Initial, November 2019), one in five workers said that their employers failed to provide hand-washing products such as soap or towels.

While it can be argued that the responsibility for clean hands lies with the individual, making it easy and providing good products and educating people about efficient hand hygiene is the first very basic step which every employer should be following.

Soap and water are the most effective way to wash hands, but only if the person dries their hands effectively too.

Simple steps for effective hand-washing:

• Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.
• Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
• Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. As a general guide, hum Happy Birthday twice.
• Rinse your hands well under clean, running water.
• Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them.

When to wash your hands:

• As soon as you get home or into work
• When you blow your nose, sneeze or cough
• When you eat or handle food
• Before you touch your eyes, nose and mouth

Hand sanitizers are also effective if soap and water is unavailable, but it is best to use alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. You can tell if the sanitizer contains at least 60% alcohol by looking at the product label. Sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in many situations. However, sanitizers do not get rid of all types of germs and may not be as effective when hands are visibly dirty or greasy. We have a range of cleaning and sanitizing products available for workplaces.

Cleaning of property/desks:

You need to ensure that surfaces and desks are cleaned regularly. Because it's a new illness, experts are still not certain how Covid-19, the new variation of coronavirus spreads from person to person, but similar viruses spread by cough or sneeze droplets. These droplets fall on people in the vicinity and can be directly inhaled or picked up from a contaminated surface on the hands and transferred when someone touches their face.

Under most circumstances, the amount of infectious virus on any contaminated surfaces is likely to have decreased significantly by 24 hours, and even more so by 48 hours.

Cleaning of visibly dirty surfaces followed by disinfection is a best practice measure for prevention of COVID-19 and other viral respiratory illnesses. Use detergent and water to clean visible dirt and the US Center for Disease Control recommends then using a disinfectant or cleaning product with at least 70% alcohol

Special care should be made to clean areas where someone who has cold and flu like symptoms has been working, and all potentially contaminated high-contact areas such as toilets, door handles and telephones.

Signage Provisions:

Put up information or signs about hand washing guidelines and procedures. Contact us today for more information on safety signage.

Policies and Education:

Check your cleaning and safeguarding healthcare policies and send your staff updates. Now is also a good time to look at our policies regarding cleaning, not just of office surfaces, but also PPE equipment and items which will be used and shared by multiple members of staff. Training should include when to use PPE, what PPE is necessary, how to properly use PPE, and how to properly launder and dispose of PPE.

When it comes to providing PPE, face masks play a very important role in clinical settings, such as hospitals but there’s very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use outside of these clinical settings. Face masks must be worn correctly, changed frequently, removed properly and disposed of safely in order to be effective.

Employers should educate staff and workers performing cleaning, laundry, and trash pick-up activities to recognize the symptoms of COVID-19 and provide instructions to all staff on what to do if they develop symptoms within 14 days after their last possible exposure to the virus. At a minimum, any staff should immediately notify their employer and call 111 if they develop symptoms of COVID-19.

Face-to-Face Meetings:

Avoid unnecessary meetings. Many people can phone in or use video conferencing links rather than being physically present for meetings. It’s worth considering this as an option, and it is one which might in the longer term prove a useful way to save your organisation time and expenses.

If you would like to find out more about which products will suit your needs, or enquire about stock levels on high demand products, please call us on 0161 476 4555 or email sales@knightsuk.com for free advice.