Several business places have a staff break room or kitchenette so that their staff will have a place to have their meals and a snack while at work.
As is often the case with communal spaces, no specific person or groups of persons is responsible to keep it clean and tidy. As a result, there can be some very messy communal eating areas around. While this may be an eyesore and make taking lunch to uncomfortable for some, an unkempt break-room is not only unpleasant, it can be very dangerous.
Food Borne Illnesses
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) estimates that up to 5.5 million people in the UK are affected by food borne illnesses each year, which means that 1 in every 10 people will be affected by some kind food poisoning.
While there are many causes for food borne illnesses, one of the easiest ways that they are transmitted is by the improper handling of food to include handling in unhygienic environments. It is very easy for an area to become overrun with harmful bacteria as a single bacterium on a surface can multiply to millions of bacteria in a matter of hours, which if consumed, can make you very ill.
Some of the most common types of the illnesses caused by improper food handling are listeria, noro-virus and salmonella.
Apart from being harmful to health, when employees are out sick due to illness, it affects the business’ productivity. If you happen to have an outbreak in the staff room where several employees are affected at once, your business can be severely affected or may even be closed for a few days by the health authorities or just because you do not have enough staff to keep the business open because most are ill at the same time.
Hire A Cleaning Contractor
All of this potential calamity can be avoided by adhering to strict cleanliness practices in the break-room, but herein lies the problem. No matter how many rules and guidelines are set for employee’s to keep the surroundings clean, inevitably there are going to be a few who just do not conform, and those acts of non-conformance are the ones that can have serious effects.
The way that businesses can guarantee that their break room is not a hotbed of germs is to retain the services of a cleaning company. A cleaning company will ensure that all the necessary steps are taken to avoid the spread of germs and make the environment clean, neat, fresh and a pleasant place in which to have a meal.
A good contractor will recommend and carry out a detailed cleaning once daily, and during the day will sanitize the surfaces from time to time. Surfaces such as the counters, refrigerator and microwave doors and the coffee pot will come in for special attention as these are the areas that are most frequently handled and the ones most likely to have harmful bacteria.
At North Kent Cleaning Services, we will go the extra mile to ensure that your break room and your entire business place are kept in top condition. Please contact us at info@northkentcleaning.co.uk or 01634 271 173 so we can help to maintain your surroundings.
