Autumn is awesome: the colours, the coffees, the run-up to Christmas… It’s all lovely. By the time Halloween rolls around, the nights are long and the air is cold and crisp. Nothing beats the cosy feeling of quiet contentment you feel when it’s chilly outside, but warm inside. When you’re wrapped in a blanket, watching telly or reading, while toasting your feet by a fire or a radiator.
The Danish and Norwegian language calls it hygge. The closest Welsh word is Cwtch. Whatever you call it, it’s one of the nicest things a person can feel.
But the autumn isn’t all snuggles and hot chocolates. It’s also flu season – and it can get pretty rough. And for people who work in an office, there’s real risks at play. Behind the symphony of sniffles, the chorus of coughs, and that one colleague who insists they’re “fine” while looking like death warmed up, flu season is just the worst for health, morale, and productivity.
We all remember (mostly unwillingly) the horrors of the COVID pandemic – and how much it ruined work, life, and everything else in-between. But it doesn’t have to be like that anymore.
We all learned a lot from that time – and with the right approach to workplace hygiene, offices can significantly reduce the spread of illness while keeping teams healthy, happy, and at their desks more often.
What we learned from the COVID pandemic
Remember 2020? When the world shut down? When all became amateur bakers, and “you’re on mute” became the phrase of the decade?
What a time… Hard to believe how long it’s been since then.
Beyond the bread and the endless Zoom quizzes, the pandemic taught us how much we need each other. And it also gave us some genuinely valuable lessons about workplace hygiene.
The biggest one was about airborne transmission and ventilation. Before COVID, most of us thought of germs as something you only picked up from touching dirty surfaces – and yes, that’s still completely true, but the pandemic opened our eyes to the fact that breathing the same air as someone who’s unwell is a pretty effective way to get poorly as well.
We also learned that cleaning isn’t just about appearances. A surface that looks spotless can still be crawling with viruses and bacteria. The pandemic forced us to think about cleaning in terms of disinfection and killing pathogens, not just removing what you can see.
And we learned that looking after each other matters the most. We quarantined and isolated when we got unwell, to take care of each other. That spirit of collective responsibility is something we should carry on. And as the world changes yet again, we need that sense of togetherness more than ever.
The changing climate and longer flu seasons
Flu season isn’t what it used to be. Because of our changing climate, the cold and flu season is stretching out, starting earlier, and lasting longer. Milder winters mean that flu viruses can circulate for more months of the year, and unpredictable weather patterns make it harder to predict when the peak will hit.
What does all this mean for your office?
You can’t afford to only think about hygiene in the winter anymore. The new reality is that flu and cold viruses start spreading much sooner, and your office cleaning schedule and scope should reflect that.
And you’ve got to rethink how you ventilate your office. On a mild day, opening a window is fine – but when temperatures drop or it’s tipping it down, you’re going to be relying on your office ventilation system to keep fresh air circulating to remove those airborne pathogens. And as we’ve discussed before, a dirty ventilation system is worse than useless – it’ll just circulate dust and germs around the office:
Read more – Why Cleaning Your Office Ventilation Matters
Encouraging self-quarantine and making WFH work
There’s this weird workplace culture that celebrates soldiering on when you’re ill, and it’s really harmful. When someone comes in coughing and sneezing, claiming they’re “not contagious anymore” or “just powering through,” they can make you and half your team sick a week later.
That knocks on to more sick days. More sick families of your team members, parents having to take kids out of school and miss more days. Vulnerable people getting dangerously unwell. Whole communities, now unwell. All because one person felt so obligated to be at their desk that they deemed their only choice was to go into work sick.
We really need to kill that culture.
There’s really no excuse for forcing people to choose between their health and their job. The pandemic taught us that remote work is perfectly viable.
If someone is unwell, the best thing they can do for the business is stay at home, because one person on WFH for three days is far less disruptive than eight people off sick for a week.
Tell your team that working from home when they’re ill is actively encouraged, and have a clear policy in place. Make sure everyone has the equipment and access they need to work remotely, and lead by example.
The law around sick employees
You can’t legally force an employee to work when they’re unwell. Employment law protects workers, and if someone is genuinely too ill to work, they’re entitled to take sick leave.
You have a legal responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work Act to provide a safe working environment. If you knowingly allow someone who’s contagious to come into the office and infect others, you could potentially be held liable – and you don’t want to be in that position.
The sensible approach is to have a clear, humane sickness policy that encourages people to stay home when they’re unwell, and to trust your team to make good decisions. Most people don’t want to be off sick; they want to do their jobs – so when someone says they’re too ill to come in, believe them.
Office cleaning for flu season
Right – let’s get into the practical stuff!
High touch areas are germ superhighways
The single most effective thing you can do to reduce flu transmission in your office is to focus your cleaning efforts on high touch areas.
Think about your daily routine, and how many things you touch on your way through the office:
- Pushing open the doors
- Pressing lift buttons
- Tapping away on your keyboard
- Making a cup of tea, handling the kettle, the fridge door, the milk carton
- Using the printer, the photocopier, maybe the microwave at lunchtime
- Using the phone
- Passing documents around
- Using shared toilets and sinks
- Getting a drink from the water dispenser
Now multiply all of that by every single person in the office…
Those surfaces, the ones that are touched by dozens of people every single day, are where viruses love to hang out. Research has shown that flu viruses can survive on hard surfaces like stainless steel and plastic for up to 48 hours. That’s two days where a single contaminated door handle can be infecting people!
Professional office cleaners will prioritise these touchpoints. Door handles, light switches, lift buttons, shared keyboards and mice, printer controls, kitchen appliances, and bathroom fixtures – these should all be cleaned and disinfected as often as possible during peak flu season. That’s just one of the big benefits of having office cleaners on contract; you get a more round-the-clock approach to office cleaning, especially for bigger and busier workplaces.
Don’t neglect the loos
WCs are high traffic, high touch environments. Taps, door handles, toilet flushes, and hand dryers are all surfaces that people touch after doing something that involves… well, you know!
Without proper cleaning, these points become hotbeds for germs.
You only really need to nail the basics. Make sure there’s always plenty of antibacterial soap, and that it’s not watered down. Make sure paper towels or hand dryers are working and well stocked. And clean the toilets, floors, sinks and dryer buttons regularly – perhaps even throughout the day if it’s a big shared space.
Read more – Office Cleaners, it’s Time to Talk TOILETS!
Door handles on the way out are a particular problem. You wash your hands, then touch the handle to leave, and pick up whatever the last person left behind. Consider using hands-free options where possible, or at the very least, make sure door handles are being disinfected frequently.
The kitchen
Office kitchens, where hands and mouths come into closest contact, often with shared equipment – like the office microwave. Someone heats up their lunch, touches the door handle, the buttons, the door again. Then the next person does the same. By the end of lunchtime, dozens of people have touched that microwave, and it’s probably got a fine mist of food particles on it too.
Yum!
The fridge is similar. Every time someone opens it, they’re transferring whatever’s on their hands onto the handle.
The best thing to do is make it easy for people to clean up after themselves. Keep antibacterial wipes readily available in the kitchen, and encourage everyone to wipe down surfaces and equipment they’ve used. And of course, your office cleaners should be giving the kitchen a thorough going over with every visit.
Ventilation
We’ve touched on this already, but it’s a big one. Good ventilation is one of the most effective ways to reduce the spread of airborne viruses. In the warmer months, opening windows is the easiest way to improve airflow. But as we head into colder weather, we naturally shut everything up tight, which traps stale, contaminated air inside.
Your HVAC system needs to be serviced regularly – and your cleaners need to take care of dust and grime build-up around the vents.
If you want to be really thorough, consider investing in air purification units for meeting rooms and other enclosed spaces. They can help remove airborne particles and keep the air fresher.
Good hygiene is good business
We all know that keeping the office clean is the right thing to do. But if you need a business reason to justify the investment, just think about the cost of sick leave. It adds up fast.
When you factor in the cost of covering absences, the lost productivity, and the knock-on effects on team morale and client service, one bad flu outbreak can cost your business thousands. A single flu case can lead to multiple absences as it spreads through the team, and the disruption can ripple out for weeks.
But it doesn’t have to be a disaster. With professional office cleaning, you can massively mitigate the impact of flu and colds on your workspace.
Get Professional Office Cleaners in for Flu Season
Hire professional office cleaners in Cardiff, from The Abbey Cleaning Service. We’ll give your office a thorough, hygienic clean with every visit – protecting you and your team from the worst of the flu season. Call 029 2067 9323 today for a clean that’ll keep your office looking (and feeling) better for longer.
