Everyone is looking forward to that time of the year where most office workers and employees can finally rest for a few days right before starting the New Year celebration. Of course, some employees are still obliged to come to the office to finish a few tasks here and there to ensure that everything will keep going.
During the festive season, most employees will be out-of-town or celebrating with their family and loved ones. But even though most individuals will be out of the office, someone will still need to be there to keep the facilities in pristine condition.
But for most janitors, sanitary specialists, and custodians, they’re usually spending most of their time ensuring that these facilities are squeaky clean most of the day. Throughout most of the year, government agencies and various organizations have been instructing workplaces and facilities in sanitizing each surface of the area, especially since this can be modes of transmission for a particularly contagious virus. This makes it even more crucial to keep our workplace clean, even during the Christmas season and New Year’s celebration.
But how do you effectively manage to have a skeleton crew that’s maintaining your workspace throughout the Christmas season? What can you do to expedite the cleaning process and ensure that they will be back with their families before the festivities start? These tips will help ensure that the workplace is clean.
Cleaning the Exteriors of Your Building
The tricky part of cleaning your workplace isn’t necessarily cleaning what’s in the building since it will be the same routine throughout the year. It’s even going to be easier for those cleaning since there’s not going to be as much foot traffic as most people might think. But the more challenging part in cleaning your workplace is keeping the exteriors in a presentable condition.
During the winter season, snowfall, rain, and the wind can be an added complication. Naturally, you don’t want the snow to accumulate on your roof and overhangs since this can often lead to ice stalactites, which can be a problem when it comes to safety. What’s a great way of decreasing the surface area of your roof and your overhangs without making drastic changes? Retractable rolling awnings are a great way of giving shade and a surface area to some parts of your facilities during warmer months. It can be easily retracted during colder seasons so that snow and rain won’t accumulate.
De-cluttering and Cleaning the Workplace
Right after the festivities, most individuals will start celebrating the New Year. One of the best ways of celebrating the New Year is by starting everything with a fresh new clean slate, and there’s no better way of doing it than having a clean and de-cluttered workplace for your employees and workforce.
Some offices (such as clinics) will have their own waiting lobbies and make-shift function halls with dusty old magazines that some employees will read in their spare time or when customers are waiting for their turn. You can start donating these books and magazines to advocacies and schools that might be close by. If no one wants these magazines, you can always take them home or donate them to recycling plants.
IT maintenance
When most of your employees are just at home, there’s only going to be a minimal amount of “traffic” on your network, which can lay off a bit of pressure on the business’s servers and systems. This is a great opportunity to do some much-needed maintenance to your IT systems to ensure that everything will be back to 100% performance once they come back. There are different ways of strengthening your systems’ security, such as performing a penetration test that will help show vulnerabilities and other problems in your system.
Consider the Hard Work of Your Custodians
Although there’s no problem in doing a bit of overtime work during holidays and weekends, some employees might be a bit “bummed out” if they’re forced to work through the holidays, even though they might want to spend time with their family, they’re still sacrificing much of their time to help out the business. To keep much of the atmosphere in high spirits, you might want to consider giving them a bit of “bonus” for working through much of the holiday season or at least a gift or two.
At the end of the day, your employees are still human, and they will still need to go back to their families during the festive season. You might want to reward them for the hard work of staying back and maintaining your facilities.
There are different ways of maintaining your workspace, even during the Christmas season and the New Year celebration. The colder seasons might mean that you’ll need to use specialized ways of cleaning your facilities. However, it is still necessary, as having a clean environment will help increase your workforce’s performance.
