With more employees returning to the workplace after two years of working-from-home and more in-person office meetings about to take place, every organisation needs to rethink their post-COVID-19 health and safety protocols. The measures must go beyond regular office cleaning to include radical office management solutions to maintaining employees’ health and wellness. If you need some advice on how to keep office meetings and employees’ interactions safe in the office, here are five simple tips to consider. 

1. Cut redundant meetings 

It’s all in the numbers. If you want to reduce complications, reduce the number of meetings – it’s that simple. While in-person meetings are great for building cohesive relationships amongst employees, establishing safe distance is the best way to tide through this difficult period.  Surely after two years of working-from-home experience, employees are used to finding alternative ways to work together. For example, instead of having weekly meetings for team updates, consider using office management solutions like Asana and Trello to replace meetings. These tools are great for organising team projects, sharing calendars and facilitating communications.  There is also no harm in using video conference apps for online meetings until the COVID-19 wave is truly over.  It’s always better to be safe than sorry. 

2. Rethink workspaces 

Hiring professional office cleaning services is of utmost importance during this period but reorganising workspaces can have an even better result for ensuring employee wellness.   The first step is to re-design workstations, seating arrangements and meeting rooms to maintain proper distancing without compromising productivity.  Limiting the number of employees in one area and avoiding overcrowding are essential for preventing unfortunate outbreaks from happening too.  If budget allows, consider incorporating contactless or sensor-activated devices to limit touchpoints.  Such devices can reduce frequent office cleaning too. Where possible, encourage employees to continue to work from home or stagger their in-office schedule to minimise interaction. With fewer employees in the office, you’ll reduce the risk of person-to-person infection and lighten the load of your office business cleaning services team.

3. Understand the difference between cleaning and disinfecting 

For office meetings to be safe and successful, they must be organised within a clean and hygienic compound that has gone through thorough cleaning and disinfecting by a corporate office cleaning services team. Take note that cleaning alone is never enough to kill germs and bacteria that are lingering on open surfaces. Especially when the COVID-19 virus is so highly contagious, the office deep cleaning services team that you appoint must include the disinfecting process as part of their office cleaning routine. Such a process will require commercial-grade disinfecting chemicals that are not readily available in retail markets.

4. Identify high-contact areas for cleaning

High traffic zones and high-contact surfaces always require more regular office cleaning but you’ll probably need to intensify the cleaning processes for these areas under this Covid-19 climate.  Your office business cleaning services team may even need to clean shared items like doorknobs, office equipment, switches and pantry taps more than once a day. 

Additionally, remind your office deep cleaning services team to organise daily cleaning for work desks, chairs, keyboards and mouses that employees use throughout the workday.  These surfaces are hotbeds for countless bacteria. Even the Staphylococcus aureus, a common bacteria known to cause stomach upsets, are often found on some of these surfaces. 

5. Consider engaging corporate office cleaning services

Engaging a corporate office cleaning services team to assist in regular cleaning is the best option to ensure your office remains a safe haven for your employees.  These cleaning companies have well-trained staff for commercial office cleaning and they deploy professional equipment and chemicals for sanitising and disinfecting so that your office will always be in tip-top condition. The result? Employees can have better peace of mind working at their workstations or engaging with others over meetings.  ‍

Nimbus provides professional office cleaning solutions and professional management services for workspaces in Singapore. View our comprehensive range of office management services to find out more.