Is Your Workplace Safe? Save Lives, Clean Your Hands 2017

Established by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the global Save Lives Clean Your Hands initiative will aim to improve awareness of hand hygiene in health care. Taking place on the 5th May, the event is an extension of the organisation’s Clean Care is Safer Care work challenge, in a bid to stop the spread of antibiotic resistance.

Hand hygiene is crucial to improving patient safety and the prevention of often life threatening healthcare associated infections. Now campaigned in over 40 countries, Save Lives Clean Your Hands will encourage people to clean their hands at the right time and in the right way.

The Save Lives Clean Your Hands messages are not only important in the healthcare industry. Organisations in all sectors should be aware of the potential dangers of poor hygiene in order to improve work-related illness.

Hand hygiene in the workplace

According to recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, British businesses lose 131 million days to sickness every year. Minor illnesses, like coughs, colds and vomiting, accounted for nearly 30% of all time taken off, however, much of this time could be prevented through promoting better hygiene.

Handwashing is one of the most effective ways to avoid sick days and the spreading of illness:

• Research found that handwashing reduces respiratory illnesses such as colds, in the general population by 21%.

• Another study promoting clean hands in corporate environments showed that handwashing resulted in fewer employee illnesses and less use of sick days. Handwashing may therefore also reduce the spread of illness to others at work.

• A sick employee will generally be less productive if they choose to come to work. Encouraging handwashing could save you time and money in the long-term.

• Facility Management Magazine reported that “50% of office workers admit that hygiene concerns affected their productivity.” Improving the hygiene in your workplace may also improve productivity on the whole.

How you can encourage handwashing at work

Promoting hand hygiene in the office is beneficial not just for employee health, but also productivity and motivation, which is important for businesses to maintain. Here are some key measures you can implement to improve company hygiene:

• Hand out reminders and promotional materials to prompt staff to consider their hand hygiene and inform them of the standard of hygiene that is expected at work. Posters or flyers can reiterate the key points on improving health and show statistics that will encourage employees to wash their hands.
• Your office manager can get the team together and give a presentation on the importance of hand hygiene and its effects on health and the spread of illness. This may be a more direct way to get employees on board. Talking with employees in person is one of the most effective ways to encourage better hygiene.
• Investing in quality office cleaning and hygiene supplies can immediately encourage employees to wash their hands and lower concerns of poor hygiene for a healthier and more productive workplace. As a leading distributor of washroom equipment, we provide a range of sanitising soaps, soap dispensers and other hygiene products for corporate environments throughout the UK.

To find out more about our services you can call the SP Hygiene team on 0113 245 8157, or email info@sphygiene.co.uk.