The ball has dropped and another year of office productivity has begun! But to get the most out of this new start, you must look inwards. By that, we mean you have to look inside your office space and think about all of the ways it can be improved. After all, an aesthetically-pleasing, clean work environment is a major benefit to employee morale and client relationships.
Therefore, what better time to revamp the office than at the beginning of a brand new year? Here are some effective office improvements you can implement to create a more enjoyable and productive work environment this year.
Repaint the Meeting Rooms and Common Areas
Nothing makes a room feel revitalized and brand-new like a fresh coat of paint. It’s an easy office improvement that makes a big, immediate visual impact. Repainting has some major benefits, such as making older buildings feel new and even preventing mold. Meeting rooms and common areas like lobbies and break rooms benefit the most from a new coat of paint, as they see lots of foot traffic from visitors and employees alike, while still being contained enough to not feel like a massive project.
Repainting is even more effective if you keep color theory in mind. The color you pick for your meeting room or lobby can drastically affect someone’s mood and perception of a space. For example, white can make a small room feel larger, while shades of blue and green can invoke a calming effect in people.
Improve Your Office’s Air Quality
We all need to breathe and your indoor air quality can greatly affect the health and comfort of your employees. Start off the new year by checking to ensure your ventilation system is in working order. Now is an especially good time to check as winter is the time of year where we usually keep the windows closed. This means that ensuring that your air filters are clean is key to maintaining good air quality. If they aren’t, they could be pumping in more pollution rather than filtering it out.
Take Steps to Prevent Germ Spread
With the start of the new year, flu season is in full swing. If you want to keep your office healthy and productive, you need to stop the spread of germs in the office. Step one is hiring professional cleaners who will disinfect your office on a regular and frequent basis. These cleaners should be sure to hit some of the germiest surfaces in the building, like keyboards, light switches, elevator buttons, and bathroom sink handles.
A professional cleaning service can also apply antimicrobial films like the Silver Defender to kill germs on contact. This product kills 99% of viruses and bacteria upon first application, and remains effective for weeks after. Your janitorial team can ensure that they’re regularly replaced every few weeks, keeping your touchpoints’ germ-killing game on-point.
You can also keep sickness at bay with little improvements, like hand-washing policies, keeping a hefty supply of tissues and hand sanitizers around, and implementing sick policies that will keep ill employees out of the office. When your office stays healthy, you’ll quickly notice higher productivity. Higher productivity means projects get done sooner, which keeps clients happy, which gets you referrals and brings in more business and revenue.
Hire a Day Porter to Clean Your Bathrooms
There are few things more unpleasant than a bathroom that hasn’t been cleaned. If your office’s bathrooms get a lot of usage, it can quickly get dirty and filled with bacteria. What’s more, it can be off-putting to visiting clients and embarrassing for you should they walk into a bathroom that’s filled with trash and lacks soap and paper towels. This New Year, resolve to give your office cleaner bathrooms.
The simplest way to do this is to hire a day porter to keep on top of your bathroom’s daily cleaning needs. A day porter can keep your bathrooms clean throughout the day, restock paper towels and soap dispensers, mop up spills, and disinfect surfaces as needed. This way your bathroom will look its best no matter who uses it.
Implement Green Cleaning Programs
Taking better care of the environment is a great New Year’s resolution for anyone. Your office can do its part in many ways. One of the best options is to implement green cleaning policies. This means your cleaning service will be using eco-friendly cleaning products. For example, our cleaning teams only use Green Seal Certified cleaning products to ensure you’re getting genuinely
Why go green? Because it’s a better solution for both your business and the planet. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “Using green cleaning products can help to reduce the human health and environmental concerns that come along with cleaning.” The chemicals that can be found in traditional cleaning products can be extremely harmful to the environment. This is especially when used in bulk like they are in large office buildings. They can be just as harmful to the building’s occupants, with long-term health issues being connected to exposure to many common cleaning chemicals.
Keep Your Floors Clean
Floor care is something many neglect, but this new year, it can be a major improvement for your office. Clean floors leave a great first impression to visitors, especially in the seasons where dirt, mud, and leaves are more likely to get tracked in. If your floors are carpeted, regular vacuuming can prevent allergens from getting tracked in, too. Keeping up on floor care also improves the longevity of your floors. It can cut down on wear and tear, which puts off the need to replace your floors, which can be quite expensive.
It’s a new year, and there’s no better time to improve your office. But the best way to get these improvements started is by hiring a professional cleaning service that does them all. Contact us today and we can start scheduling the services you need for your facilities.