Importance Washing Your Hands Work

A clean and healthy office goes beyond regular commercial cleaning
services, washing your hands is always an important activity to
incorporate into your office routine. Not only does regular hand washing
benefit you and remove potentially harmful dirt and bacteria from your hands.
It also helps benefit everyone who spends time around you, since it stops the
spread of germs–especially if you spend a lot of time around a group of
people in a setting like your office.

If you want to know why you should focus on washing your hands at
work, and why everyone at your organization should focus on a regular hand
washing routine, here are some of the most important ways it can benefit
people.

Stop the Spread of Disease

Getting sick is a regular part of life. If you work with a group
of people, there’s a good chance that people will get sick from time to time.
To stop people who are sick at work from spreading their germs to other
people, or to wash off germs from someone sick that may have accidentally
been passed to you, encourage handwashing. Studies show that handwashing is
effective at stopping the spread of germs, and that it can reduce the risk of
respiratory
infections by 16%.

Boost Attendance, Productivity, and Success

It can harm a business with employees are out sick, or they’re at
work but don’t feel well enough to do their best. By encouraging regular
handwashing at work, companies can reduce absenteeism and ensure that no work
time is wasted. Even using alcohol based hand sanitizer as a means of washing
hands can help keep people well and showing up. In fact, in a school setting,
the use
of hand sanitizer to keep hands clean reduced absences due to
illness by 19.8%.

How to Encourage Handwashing at Work

Obviously, washing hands in the workplace is an important step for
health and hygiene. But, how do you make sure everyone at work is washing
their hands, too? Here are some ways that you can encourage a culture of hand
washing at the office.

• Be Prepared: Always keep soap
  dispensers full and paper towels stocked. By ensuring sinks are properly
  equipped for hand washing, you’ll encourage people to do it. If you don’t
  have a maintenance team, create a rotating schedule so that each person
  checks soap dispensers twice daily for a week.
• Offer Hand Sanitizer: Put hand
  sanitizer dispensers throughout your office to encourage regular cleaning of
  hands. While washing hands with soap and water can completely remove germs
  from hands, hand sanitizer can help kill harmful bacteria and stop the spread
  of disease.
• Use Signage: Create signs and post
  them around the bathrooms and kitchens reminding people to wash their hands.
  Sometimes a little reminder is all it takes to get someone to stop and get
  clean.

At the end of the day, the workplace is a spot where people spend
a lot of time in close proximity to one another. Because people are so close
so frequently, it ups the chances that they can spread germs to one another.
The spread of germs is also common because people touch and use the same
facilities and items. By encouraging regular handwashing at work, you can
reduce the spread of germs, increase regular attendance, and ensure that more
people stay healthy and happy in the office year round.