October 5, 2020 Is Your Office Corona Proof?

In this article we tell you what to do to ensure your office is corona proof.

As long as there is no vaccine for the coronavirus, we all have to be careful. That means keeping your distance to other people, washing your hand regularly and working from home as much as possible. But for some companies, working from home is not as easy as it seems. To stop the virus from spreading, it is of major importance that the companies that still have (some of the) employees working at the office, take adequate measures concerning hygiene. Is your office already corona proof? In this article, we tell you what you can do.

Enough Sanitizers

Rule number one when it comes to hygiene, is to wash your hands regularly. In times of corona, “regularly” doesn’t only apply to washing your hands after a visit to the toilet, but also when entering and leaving the building and when touching objects that many other people may have touched – the fridge, coffee machine, elevator, door handles etc. And definitely don’t forget to wash your hands before you start eating. So as an employer, you need to make sure that there are enough sanitizers (Dutch: ontsmettingsmiddelen) in the building. That means at least at the entrance, kitchen, toilet and hallways. Make sure that they are visible to everyone.

TIP: Do you have flexible workplaces at your office? Then make sure that you also put sanitizers and cleaning wipes on the desks of your employees. Remind your employees that they need to clean their desk – especially computer, keyboard and mouse – when they go home (and preferable also when they start).

Inform Your Employees

People are aware that they have to be careful and act in a responsible way. But sometimes they simply forget about all the rules. People are social animals and may accidentally give colleagues or clients a hand or forget to keep their 1.5 distance to each other. It’s therefore important that you as an employer remind your employees of their responsibility. What may be handy is using floor stickers and marking lines that show where to stand and in which direction to walk. You can also make signs with specific instructions for a specific location (e.g., the kitchen). Simply stick the signs to the wall with some superglue (Dutch: secondelijm). You can use these signs, for example, to inform your employees about how many people are allowed to sit at the kitchen table at the same time. Or you can friendly ask your clients to disinfect their hands if they enter the building.

Everyday Cleaning

You probably already have professional cleaners that clean the office every once in a week. But in times of corona, that may be not enough. It doesn’t mean that you need to clean the whole office every day, but you need to pay extra attention to specific rooms and objects in the building. For example, we advise you to clean the door handles, toilets, coffee machines, handles of the kitchen cabinets etc. You can’t help it that people touch these objects, so make sure that they are cleaned regularly.

There are many more things you can do to make your office corona proof, but these are the basics. We wish you good luck and stay safe!

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