Germs are on our mind these days–especially during cold and flu season. To protect your employees, and help employees protect themselves from germs, we compiled a list of the germiest places at work. Here’s a hint…they’re places that get a lot of traffic.

#1 Door Handles

Door handles get a lot of dirty hands, so they’re a place that needs frequent cleaning–especially during cold and flu season when sickness seems to spread.

#2 Desktop

You spend a lot of time at your desk, so it’s likely not a surprise that it has far more germs — about 400 times more — than a toilet seat. That amounts to about 21,000 bacteria, viruses, and fungi per square inch. All of these germs travel on your hands, so it’s important to wipe down desks so that you don’t spread these gross germs to other places in the office. As always, washing your hands and sanitizing frequently helps prevent the spread as well.

#3 Keyboard

Consider how much you touch your keyboard every single day. Not only do your dirty fingers touch it, but you eat over it, spill drinks on it and sneeze and cough on it. That amounts to a lot of germs!

#4 Telephone

Phones have lots of germs, and if it’s used by multiple people, it has even more. Wipe down all parts of the phone frequently to keep employees (or yourself) safe and healthy.

#5 Copier and Other Office Equipment

How often does your printer’s touchpad get wiped down? How about your other office equipment? Maybe not as often as it should. Germs hide and thrive on the buttons of the printer, copier, fax, postage meter, and other office devices.

#6 Breakroom Sink

In addition to all of the hands touching the faucet handle, the sink gets food and bacteria that can increase the germiness.

#7 Elevator Buttons

If your facility has an elevator, make sure the buttons get cleaned frequently. Think about how many people touch the buttons with unclean hands. It’s enough to make you want to wipe down the buttons immediately!

#8 Water Cooler

Like the other places that made the list, the water cooler gets tons of people filling up water bottles and getting hot water for tea. Everyone who touches it brings their own germs and grime. Wipe down anything that people touch on the water cooler to keep it germ free.

#9 Coffee Maker and Pot

This is one spot that often gets overlooked. We rinse out the coffee pot but think about how often the handle gets cleaned. Probably not often enough.

Regarding the coffee maker, you can take this into your own hands. After all, bacteria love to grow in the damp, dark insides of these well-loved machines. Fill it with 4 cups of plain white vinegar, and let that stand for a half-hour. Then let it run through, followed by three cycles of water, or until you don’t smell the vinegar.

#10 Microwave Door

People use the microwave to heat up coffee, lunches, and whatever else they need during the work day. People touch the handle each time they use the microwave, and they have to press the buttons as well. Add it to your list of places to frequently clean.

Hopefully our list gives you places to focus on to keep your facility as clean as can be. And if you’re in need of a commercial cleaner, give us a call so we can keep your employees safe and healthy.

With COVID-19 and the flu, keeping your business clean and safe is essential. We compiled some tips to help you keep your employees healthy this winter.

Up the Cleaning

Consistent, professional cleaning is essential, and you can even increase the amount of cleanings. In addition, increase cleaning and disinfecting of frequently touched surfaces. You can also encourage employees to wipe down phones, keyboards, door handles, and other objects after they use them. The following are known to carry more germs than you can imagine:

• Light switches
• Phones
• Bathroom and company kitchen faucets
• Elevator buttons
• Desktops
• Office equipment
• Water cooler
• Coffee maker
• Vending machines

Stay Home

Encourage sick employees to stay home and avoid spreading germs around the office. Offer ways for sick employees to work remotely if it’s feasible.

Vary Your Shifts

If you can, consider staggered shifts for employees. Staggering shifts minimizes the amount of interaction that employees will have with one another, which could lower the risk of transmission.

Go Online

Online meeting fatigue is real, but it does prevent contaminating other employees. If you can, increase the amount of virtual meetings and in-person events during flu season. Instead of a holiday party, host a summer BBQ when you can have an event outdoors and during warmer summer months.

Need Help? 

Contact us today if you have questions about keeping employees safe this winter season or want to inquire about commercial cleaning.

Ensuring your data centers are clean and contaminant free keeps your data safe, prevents data loss, avoids hardware failures, and prevents costly downtime.

Why Clean Data Centers? 

Protecting data is crucial to business because downtime can be costly and catastrophic. Proactively cleaning and maintaining your data center keeps your business running smoothly. Data centers have equipment and surfaces that are susceptible to dirt and dust. Contaminants can make their way into data centers, which harms data servers by causing overheating and system errors.

Several types of companies have data centers:

• Call centers
• Command centers
• Web hosting companies
• Data processing centers
• Colocation data centers
• Telecom facilities

Cleaning Data Centers 

Using specific data-center permitted equipment, evaluating who enters the data center, cleaning consistently and hiring experienced cleaners can help protect your business.

Equipment

Data centers are unique, so the process to clean them is unique as well. Here’s some of the equipment used to clean data centers:

• Special dust cloths featuring particle absorbent material
• Low-lint mops that don’t shed
• No-ammonia cleaners
• Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) vacuums with High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters

Evaluate Who (and What) Enters the Data Center

In general, about 90 percent of the air in a data center is recirculated. So it’s crucial to keep dust, dirt, and debris out and monitor potential contamination sources, such as:

• Humans bring dust, dirt and debris into data centers. You can decrease this by using tacky mats at the room entrances and having those who have to enter the data center to wear shoe covers.
• Unpack materials in another room rather than in the data room to prevent unnecessary contaminants.
• Use HEPA filters to prevent outside air contaminants from circulating in the data center.

Consistent Cleaning

Cleaning the data center consistently helps keep data safe and reduces risks for dust, dirt, debris, and particulate contamination. Every facility is different, so it’s important to examine the traffic the data center receives. High-traffic data centers could need daily or weekly cleanings. Other facilities have very low traffic without lights so they could get away with monthly or quarterly cleaning services.

Hire Data Room Cleaning Experts

It’s essential to hire experienced commercial cleaning that have highly-trained technicians and years of data center cleaning experience. Experts understand the nuances to cleaning data centers safely and meticulously. If you’re in need of a data center expert, reach out to Joncowest. We can answer any questions you might have and provide a detailed data center cleaning quote.