10 Tips to Prevent the Spread of Coronavirus in Your Workplace

The World Health Organisation or WHO has declared the spread of coronavirus or COVID-19 as a pandemic on 11^th of March, 2020. This denotes the virus is spreading significantly all over the world and the number of fatalities as well as infections is expected to rise continuously in the coming months.

Severe measures will be executed to prevent the virus from spreading further. Some businesses in the United Kingdom have asked the workers to continue with their work from home but for other businesses, this won’t be possible due to equipments, logistics or other data protection rules.

If you are the manager of an office or a worker, then there are certain things you may do to prevent the spread of coronavirus in your workplace. You may hire cleaners who can help with carpet cleaning to keep them absolutely dirt free. Read on to know 10 interventions, backed by the NHS’s Coronavirus guidance and medical professionals.

1. Practice the habit of hand hygiene – It has been stated by the NHS that washing hands is the best way to be sure your hands do not contract the virus or pass it on to others. When you have the virus on your hands, it won’t pass on the virus directly but continue to touch your mouth, eyes or nose and moves it into your body.
   
   As per the NHS, you should wash your hands for 20 seconds and workers should wash their hands immediately when they arrive at office. It is essential to implement these recommendations and put further notices within entranceways and use hand sanitizers. This should be done every time the staff enters the building throughout the working day.
    
2. Sending the staffs back to home – Some staffs will probably get common cold during this time of the year and might detect the symptoms that are also common with COVID-19 cases. According to the latest advice by the UK Government, coronavirus is for anyone who is not well to self-isolate themselves for seven days. Businesses should grant leave to the workers who detect any symptoms or feel sick so that they stay away from office for at least one week as safety precaution.
   
   The government has also ensured that statutory sick pay is there for the workers from the first day they start their self-isolation.
    
3. Proportional remote working facility – Though some staffs are required to come to office, others can do their work from home. You should let them to work remotely in order to lessen the chances of on-site staff being exposed to this deadly virus.
    
4. Distributing the tissues – The NHS has advised that coughing and sneezing must be done in a tissue paper and binned immediately in order to prevent unknown carriers from passing it on to others. Further, the doctors have explained this is quite effective since Coronavirus does not live for a long time outside your body and dies quickly on the tissue.
   
   Your office should persuade this kind of behaviour by supplying tissues at the desk of each worker and place the bins nearby so they can catch sneezes or coughs quickly and then bin the tissue later.
    
5. Use keyboard wipes – Though the virus won’t live for much time outside the body, the desks may spread it from person to person. For such cases, these desks and computers being used by different workers throughout the day should be cleaned daily after each worker uses it.
   
   This can help to prevent someone from touching their face and keyboard before another person comes, touches the keyboard and then their own face. This is vital as people touch their faces for more than 20 times each hour.
    
6. Do not depend on the masks only – Wearing masks whenever you step out of your house is a great way to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. Though some people are sceptical about its usefulness while others say there is at least some kind of benefit.
   
   You might like to distribute the masks to employees, who are working in the office, but the consensus is that hand hygiene and using tissues to catch coughs and sneezes is significantly more effective than when you wear a mask.
    
7. Lessen face to face contact – The workplace is where you carry out different types of activities with your colleagues navigating hallways to speak with others in different departments. Such activity might be the reason for your close contact with many staffs, however it may be mitigated to prevent spreading the virus to others.
   
   Face-to-face as well as close contact can be lessened with office phones than speaking with people at their desk and video messaging can be done for conducting the meetings.
    
8. Cancel all international business trips – If you need to go on a international trip for business purpose, then it is advised to postpone such plans for the time-being. This is because there are higher chances for the workers to contractt Coronavirus in the airport or in other country.
   
   But if you still want to plan ahead with an international trip, the workers who return back should be asked to self-isolate if in case they find any symptoms before returning to office. You might like to impose remote working or automatic self-isolation on those staff as Coronavirus carriers won’t display the symptoms or it can take at least five days for the symptoms to appear.
    
9. Relay all in-house information – The above eight tips are very effective when followed strictly by the staffs. This is the responsibility of your business to be sure all information is relayed properly between different departments. Daily emails should be sent out with necessary reminders on protocol and notices to be placed in the entryways. This will actually remind the staff their first task is to wash hands properly before entering into the office.
   
   Businesses should make the staffs comfortable in case they come ahead with symptoms that need to adopt supportive attitude and make them aware about the rights for sick pay from the first day of self-isolation.
    
10. Stay updated with the latest information – The tips discussed above follow the advice of the UK Government, the NHS and comments from the leading UK doctors. Since Coronavirus is a new illness, researchers are trying their best to know more about it every week. This may provide new advice that can be more effective in due course.
    
    Businesses need to keep themselves informed with the help of trusted sources and learn to adapt as soon as the latest information is available. The more they gather adequate information, the better it will be for them to conduct their office easily.

Thus, you need to search for a carpet cleaning company in London where the cleaners can help with cleaning the carpets and rugs in your office. This will ensure there is no dirt and dust within the premises and the employees can stay protected from the deadly disease.