Will I be safe going back to work? Can I do my job without fear of getting sick? Can I touch things?  Am I just being silly or am I going to be safe?

I’m seeing a huge shift in how businesses view cleaning, particularly as Alberta further reopens. This shift is in how businesses are viewing cleaning as it relates to the overall wellness of their company.

It’s funny as we used to take cleanliness for granted and hope that it would ‘somehow’ happen. But now, because we associate the word ‘clean’ with something that is virus-free, it has become much more than what it used to be.

No longer is commercial cleaning about first impressions and simple cleanliness. It is about reassurance. Reassurance that you and your space are safe, helping to ease anxieties about viruses that may be innocently lurking on every surface.

In conversation with clients, cleaning has now become part of their everyday safety protocols. This ensures their safety beyond the surfaces they touch, including:

• Improving the actual environment for your team’s physical health,

• Building better psychologically safe environments for your team’s mental wellness, and

• Turning cleaning as an expense into an investment to properly support both of the above.

It’s so important that we employers take the time to understand the full impact that COVID-19 had on employees from a mental standpoint, as much as it the physical toll it took.

IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

Your team cannot be in your office as you once were able to. The Alberta Government has done a good job of highlighting what you need to do to ensure you properly reopen, however, there is one crucial piece missing. That’s how to support your people with the physical AND the mental impact of COVID on them.

There is plenty of research done on how cleaning can improve your team’s productivity. Specifically, by focusing on sanitization, along with implementing specific rules for sick colleagues (e.g. do not come into work if you have the sniffles), you help your team remain healthy by:

• Minimizing the potential for germs and cross-contamination,

• Improving the overall air quality for your team, and

• Supporting/building a culture of true physical safety.

Where more research is being done today is on how cleaning can improve the overall psychological health of your team, especially as fear and anxieties have been heightened since COVID. Focusing on psychological safety and resilience helps you to:

• Support your team to remove/reduce any fear they may be feeling,

• Build a culture of diversity, inclusion, and open communication, and

• Encourage more creativity, resilience, and efficiencies in your team members.

SMALL DETAILS MAKE HUGE IMPACT

There are big things that you can do to let your team know they are safe such as putting up signs indicating what cleaning/sanitizing will be done and when; clearly marking hand sanitation stations; changing your doors to automatic/motion censored, and so forth.

However, it’s the small details that make a deeper impact on the overall mental health and safety of your team. The small details are what allow us, as individuals, to understand what we can and cannot control. This helps us to bring a sense of order for ourselves. These small details can include:

• Scheduling daily or weekly 1:1 check-ins with your individual team members to encourage them to share where they’re at from a mental standpoint. Sometimes, your team needs to feel seen, be heard, and encouraged to focus on their individual mental wellness; and

• Provide welcome back packages, filled with small items that support both the psychological and physical needs of your team, allowing them to do their work safely.

It’s when you start engaging in these small behaviours that you encourage resiliency, communication, and improved performance because you are demonstrating that you CARE about your team as individual people.

CLEANING IS AN INVESTMENT LINE ITEM

The truth is, your people are not safe if you only have professional commercial cleaning done once or twice a month. There is a reason why hotels are having to revamp their cleaning policies and realities of how much they can do simply because of the increase in sanitization standards. Same with restaurants, grocery stores, yoga studios, chiropractic offices and so many more! It is because proper cleaning and sanitizing are crucial to keeping people safe.

My own conversations with clients have been about shifting their cleaning budget from an expense to a non-negotiable operational line item. The key here in supporting them is to ensure all our professional cleaners have the proper training and certification to follow the guidelines as set out by the province...and our own standards as well.

The long and the short of it is that cleaning is transitioning to become a key operation for businesses to thrive in our new business reality. It’s no longer merely about keeping the space clean but keeping your people confident and comfortable in your space.

Looking for a special touch in supporting your team as you all come back together? Have a look at our individual Clean Club Calgary Welcome Back Bags, containing hand sanitizer, disinfectant spray, a roll of wipes, and a face mask (made by a local Calgary company!). To inquire about multiple packages, inquire with the number of packages you’re interested in here: https://www.cleanclubcalgary.com/products.