Dealing with office pests

Our lives are still littered with possible health dangers. You’ll only realize them once they start affecting you.

On commercial property these effects can impact your and other people’s lives. And what if you realize the problem too late?

Even if your premises’ health and safety guidelines are up to date you’re at risk. Pests and the dangers surrounding them have a knack of hiding until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Professional cleaning services are skilled to identify them. Are you? 

It’s smart to listen to some clichés.

Prevention IS better than cure.

Well Known Pests

Out of sight out of mind right? This is unfortunately true. Many people delay dealing with potential threats because pests aren’t seen or heard.

This doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Clues

You’ll be smart to educate employees about identifying every day pests. They leave tell tale signs. Unfortunately they’re too small to notice sometimes. You have to consciously seek them out.

• Rodents: Who opened the bag of food you thought was sealed? That could be a mouse or rat. You’ll be surprised at the neatness of their handiwork. A small neat hole is all they need to contaminate your food. They may also leave some droppings or you’ll see holes in your building’s woodwork.
• Cockroaches: They’re usually too fast to be caught in the act. But parts of their shed skin may be left all over your building.
• Fleas: You’ll probably only know of fleas when you see their bite marks on your skin.

Hazards

If you’re a nature lover you don’t like the idea of killing living things. But what if the backlash is too difficult to manage later on?

Here’s what you stand to lose:

• Mice and other rodents: The scary part is you don’t have to see them to get sick. Contaminated rats’ decaying waste expels dangerous particles into the air. You can inhale it and develop dangerous diseases such as leptospirosis that attacks many organs.
• Cockroaches: It’s a myth that dirty rooms attract cockroaches. They simply enter in search of food and warmth. But they carry parasites from the sewers they dwell in. When they die or shed skin some particles become airborne. These have adverse effects on asthmatics and people with allergies.
• Insects: If you thought fleas were bad because of the bites, did you know they can cause tapeworm? Make sure a lack of hygiene doesn’t cause someone to become sick with a 50ft worm.

These dangers are enough to call in cleaning services and pest control. They’re also quite common. Dealing with them is probably on your to do list.

Are you prepared for these following facts?

The Little Known—and even More Dangerous—Facts 

I’m not trying to scare you. But we can’t ignore the consequences of certain facts. We tend to forget the close proximity of some highly unhygienic areas around the office. No employee can avoid these areas.

Managing commercial properties calls for adequate cleaning and maintenance to keep these consequences to a minimum.

Disease Control

Hygiene has a direct impact on your employees. Did you know over 90% of employees contract diseases from their offices? This impacts:

• Healthcare costs
• Your profit margins
• The office’s productivity level

Your responsibility is towards your employees AND your business.

Why Clean?

Employing workers for daily cleaning will save you money.

Each day communal areas aren’t cleaned you increase the risk of bacterial infections by 31%. This means employees may have to put in sick leave.

Office desks are known to carry many germs. But they’re less dangerous areas if only one person works there. We are usually immune to the germs we already carry.

But how clean is your communal areas:

• Buttons on a water dispenser is a high risk area for catching germs
• Washroom taps are known to spread diseases

Each time one of these items are cleaned the risk is minimised.

How long do you want to risk employees’ health?

Does your skin crawl as much as mine did when I first realized these facts? It required a huge clean up process to make me sleep sound at night. How do the employees at your office feel about the general hygiene? Their paranoia may not be displaced. If cleanliness isn’t a priority you won’t pick up on potential dangers.

Written by John Stuart on behalf of dailypoppins.co.uk