Facility maintenance and management, including integrated cleaning services, are critical for ensuring occupant health, safety, and wellness.
The Role of Integrated Cleaning and Facility Maintenance Services in Ensuring Occupant Health
The rising demand for knowledge workers has led to an increased focus on occupant wellness due to its:
- Impact on local communities.
- Reduction of morbidity, chronic illness, and absenteeism.
- Support of social equity.
- Promotion of occupant safety, and;
- Reduction of stress, anxiety, and social isolation.
Studies have long established a strong correlation between human health and performance and the quality and nature of the built environments in which we spend most of our lives.
Our overall health is dictated by the surrounding environment and how that environment interacts with personal, genetic, and behavioral factors to affect our well-being.
Because much of our time is spent indoors, the places where we live, work, and play all have an impact on our health, mental well-being, weight, physical fitness, quality of life, productivity, and sleeping patterns, to name a few.
In today’s economy, work looks vastly different than it did a century ago, with rising focus on “knowledge work” (i.e., office professionals) and decreased demand for “industrial work” (i.e., factory workers).
According to the Annual Review of Sociology’s The Knowledge Economy, this shift in work demand has made preventable chronic diseases and illnesses — more common to office professionals — a larger cost to employers and the economy compared to health and safety concerns common to industrial workers, like acute workplace injuries and occupational diseases.
This overall shift is one of the factors that has led the real estate market to refocus on health and wellness.
Integrated cleaning programs have a direct impact on the quality of life inside office buildings in several areas, including:
- Indoor air quality.
- Access to high quality and natural lighting, and;
- Hand hygiene and safety.
The Importance of Wellness in the Workplace
Workplace wellness is critical to business success.
Chronically ill office workers negatively impact business operations and safety.
Conversely, healthy workers:
- Experience fewer illnesses.
- Operate at superior cognitive levels.
- Are more productive.
- Cost less, and;
- Produce higher profits resulting in better overall economic outcomes.
Continued environmental stress can drain physical and mental resources and ultimately affect human performance and decrease productivity.
[A] substantial amount of the US population suffers frequently from communicable respiratory illnesses, allergies and asthma symptoms.
We now have increasingly strong evidence that changes in building design, operation and maintenance can significantly reduce these illnesses.
Decreasing the prevalence and severity of these health issues would lead to lower health care costs, reduced sick leave and shorten periods of illness, resulting in economic benefits for the US in the tens of billions of dollars.
Strategies That Contribute to Workplace Wellness
Integrated cleaning programs positively impact occupant wellness by:
- Improving IAQ - Intelligently designed cleaning programs remove dust and allergens from the air, eliminate dangerous occupant contact with volatile organic compounds, and protect vital mechanical ventilation systems.
- Improving Lighting - High dusting integrated with facilities maintenance ensures occupants have access to proper lighting while ongoing professional window cleaning services deep clean external glass allowing maximum outdoor lighting and heat to penetrate indoors, and;
- Improving Hand Hygiene and Safety - Day porter and daily cleaning services eliminate the presence of common pathogens and pathogenic bacteria from surfaces that are routinely spread from occupant-to-occupant direct contact, breaking the chain of infection and preventing the transmission of illness.
Methods for ensuring the ongoing efficacy of workplace clean for health programs include:
- Conducting routine spot checks of floors and high-touch surfaces to reduce the buildup and transmission of soil, germs, bacteria, and other health-affecting microbes.
- Using high-quality cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfectant products according to manufacturer recommendations, and knowing when to use which product safely and effectively--i.e., cleaning before sanitizing or disinfecting, and using disinfectants sparingly, and;
- Placing a strong focus on service provider training and bi-directional communication with occupants and custodial management teams to ensure facility safety and hygiene expectations are met.
References & Resources
- Wellness in the Workplace: Prioritizing Occupant Health
- The Role of Facility Management in Building Occupant Wellness
- 3 Strategies That Contribute To Occupant Health
Takeaway
Implementing integrated cleaning for health programs into your facility's maintenance plan will ensure long-term occupant wellness, which has a measurably positive downstream impact on local communities and the economy as a whole.
Methods for achieving maximum occupant wellness need not be complicated and typically begin with streamlining product selection, upgrading essential cleaning tools, instituting service provider training, and implementing occupant communication protocols, such as signs around the facility.
For many organizations, internally managing these programs often fall outside of typical budgets, company focus, and management training.
Outsourcing cleaning and maintenance services is a proven and cost-effective measure for protecting the built environment of commercial facilities and the health and safety of its occupants.
Contact us today and discover why Vanguard Cleaning Systems® is the Standard of Clean® for businesses throughout Northwest Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
In Oklahoma, dial 918-960-4450
In Arkansas, dial 479-717-2410
In Missouri, dial 417-812-9777
