As noted in a previous article, it is incredibly important for commercial businesses to keep their facilities, especially the bathrooms, clean. Because of the nature of public restrooms, it’s also fundamentally important to protect maintenance personnel as much as possible when they are assigned to keep these bathrooms clean.
If you are a small office, maybe with 10 to 20 employees, you might be tempted to assign bathroom cleaning duties to one of them, but this could put you at risk of certain liabilities because of health related issues. You should either have maintenance personnel on hand as an employee or rely on a cleaning service to take care of the bathroom in that particular office environment.
Otherwise, pay attention to these five tips to help protect your maintenance personnel when they are assigned keeping the bathrooms cleaned on a regular basis.
Tip #1: Wear protective clothing at all times.
Getting in contact with another person’s bodily fluids puts somebody else at risk. Wearing latex gloves, a mask, and other protective clothing is incredibly important when cleaning a public restroom.
Tip #2: Have safe, good traction shoes.
Wearing sneakers or workboots may be best when cleaning a bathroom. The floor surface is usually some type of ceramic tile and that can become slick when wet.
Tip #3: Advise your maintenance personnel to be wary of bathroom users.
If it’s possible to close the bathroom for 10 or 15 minutes to have it cleaned every few hours, then do so. If it’s not possible, have the maintenance personnel be acutely aware of people in the restroom at that time.
Tip #4: Advise maintenance personnel to direct any comments, questions, or complaints to his or her supervisor.
The maintenance personnel should not engage people using the restroom directly. They may not know how to handle a potentially sensitive situation, so they should be directed to advise the individual where to go to speak to somebody in charge.
Tip #5: Rely on wet floor signs.
Any time they have to mop, even if it is underneath the urinal or around the toilet, they should place wet floor signs so everyone can be aware of the potentially slick conditions.