PROPER DISINFECTING TECHNIQUES TO REDUCE STUDENT & EMPLOYEE ABSENTEEISM
Rosanne Benoit
Employees average 7.7 sick days per year, costing the US 2.25 billion dollars per year. Unplanned absences cause a 54% decrease in worker productivity and a 39% drop in customer service. Customers prefer cleanliness. 94% of shoppers will avoid a business with a dirty restroom. Consumers rank cleanliness as the number 1 most important factor in choosing where to shop and eat.
Schools suffer 60 million lost days due to Norovirus and the flu alone. Students miss an average of 4.5 days decreasing federal funds by at least 2.5% per year. Absent teachers cost schools 25 billion annually with another 4 billion for substitutes. And that is if they are available. Many schools in the US have had to close down at various times because the combination of poor student turn out due to illness and and a severe shortage of healthy teachers and subs!
Disinfectants do an excellent job when used properly. It’s been covered before but I will stress again: Proper dilution and following label directions for dwell time. Give the disinfectant time to do a thorough job. Different bacteria and viruses can take different lengths of time to die.
Where to apply your disinfectant? The obvious answers, floors, walls, counters, tables, sinks, commodes and urinals…are pretty well taken care of. It’s the “other” areas we don’t think about that cause a spike in illness. We need to think about your “high touch” areas. The surfaces people touch often. Examples: Door knobs, soap dispensers, paper towel dispensers, toilet & urinal flush valves, water fountains, athletic equipments, mats, elevator buttons, school buses, lockers, vending machines, microwave and refrigerator door handles, sink faucet, cafeteria trays, the tray lines themselves. We can mop down our floors every day but if we aren’t attacking the high touch surfaces we are leaving too many opportunities for a bacterial and viral explosion!
A water fountain has 2.7 million bacteria per sq. inch. A cafeteria tray has 33,800 per sq. inch. A toilet seat has 3200. Hate to think that you are better off licking a toilet seat than drinking from a water fountain!
Please contact us for information on our excellent line of disinfectants and sanitizers! We also have application tools to save you time and money and to get the job done much more thoroughly.