Category Archives: Commercial Cleaning

People that suffer from allergies may struggle with eczema or asthma, or at worst go into anaphylactic shock.

Workplaces with dirty carpets, build-up of dust, artificial fragrances, fresh flowers, or foods that are allergens, can create very uncomfortable and unsafe environments for people suffering from allergies.

In this article, we explain how allergies affect New Zealanders, ways you can prevent allergic reactions in the workplace and how regular commercial cleaning can safely remove allergens that you can’t prevent.

Allergies in New Zealand

Unfortunately, allergies and asthma are a growing epidemic in New Zealand. Research by the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) shows that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of asthma in the world. According to the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation, that translates to 15.5% of adult New Zealanders suffering from asthma and 21% of children aged up to 14.

Allergies that kiwis suffer from are related to dust mites, food (including milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, nuts, peanuts, wheat and soy), pollen, mold and artificial fragrances.

Managing Allergies in the Workplace

It is important to be aware of any allergies your staff have and look to ways to reduce triggers in your office and workplace environment.

When hiring employees, be proactive and ask about allergies.

Food allergies

If your staff suffer from food allergies, you can identify which foods are high allergens (such as nuts and eggs), and then request that co-workers do not bring those foods to work.

When hosting work functions, ensure there are non-allergen types of foods provided.  For example, gluten free, dairy free, egg free, nut free foods.

Have a plan in place in case a staff member should have a severe allergic reaction resulting in anaphylactic shock. Train staff on how to use an epi-pen and when to call an ambulance.

Pollens

Where possible, reduce pollens in the air. One way of doing this would be to use artificial flowers instead of fresh flowers.

Mold

Mold is caused by too much humidity or moisture in the air. Ensure that bathrooms are well vented to avoid moisture buildup. Air conditioners need to have their filters cleaned regularly – you can also use a certified allergy-friendly attachment to clean the air of allergens.

Ensure any mold that does grow is immediately cleaned.

Dust

Dust mites are tiny bugs that live in dust found on furniture and especially carpets. According to a study by BMC Public Health, New Zealand has amongst the highest levels of house dust mite allergen in the world.

Ensure that your office environments are regularly and professionally cleaned to remove dust mites.

Artificial fragrances

Artificial fragrances can cause mild allergies. To prevent this use an allergy-free fragrance or ensure that staff maintain a physical distance from the dispenser.

How Commercial Cleaning can Reduce Allergies in the Workplace

Regular commercial cleaning will ensure your office spaces are clean and hygienic, removing allergens from the air, furniture and carpet.

Some ways that commercial cleaners can combat allergies include:

• Using natural cleaning products
• Using pure water window cleaning methods
• Using high-efficiency particulate absorption vacuum cleaners
• Using high quality microfibre cloths
• Thoroughly cleaning all furniture, carpets, rugs, skirting boards
• Creating barriers through products such as Scotchguard for carpet and furniture to prevent dust buildup
• Providing professional advice on changes you can make that will reduce mold or allergen build-ups

It is important to hire a good commercial cleaning company that will provide a quality cleaning service to ensure that the job is done right.

Summary

Sadly, allergies are a growing epidemic in New Zealand, with almost a quarter of our children now suffering from asthma and allergies.

Ensuring hygienic allergy-free work environments is crucial to keeping staff and clients safe and healthy. Regular commercial cleaning, alongside prevention techniques, will help too keep your staff and clients safe from allergic reactions.

As a business owner, we understand that looking after our staff and our customers means growing a more successful business. But did you know that keeping your office and workspaces clean and tidy also helps to grow a more successful business?

Here are a few ways that having your office and workplace carpets regularly cleaned can help your business flourish.

Healthy Carpets, Healthy Staff

One of the hardest things for any employer is to have staff off sick. You have to scramble to have other staff fill their jobs for them, and hope that they aren’t sick for more than a day or two. In fact, in 2018 New Zealand lost 7.4 million work days due to absence!

A great way to help keep your staff healthy, is to provide a clean healthy work environment. Carpets hold a lot of dirt, in fact they can hold as much as four times their weight in dirt and be as much as 4,000 times dirtier than your toilet seat!

Regular commercial cleaning of your office carpets can help:

1. Clean dirt and bad bacteria
2. Reduce allergens in the air
3. Remove dust mites which can trigger asthma attacks
4. Clean mold before it takes hold

Professional carpet cleaning can successfully remove about 98% of dirt and pollutants from your carpet, helping to keep your employees healthier.

Present the best to staff and clients

Impressions are very important. Stained, dirty, smelly carpets can leave a very poor impression on staff and clients. A clean healthy office shows your staff and clients that you not only value them, but take pride in all facets of your business.

A dirty work environment could make your staff feel like they do not need to respect your equipment or put in 100% effort. They may not even want to work for you at all, thinking that you might treat your employees the same way as you treat your workspaces.

Dirty office spaces may loose you business. Clients may feel you might provide a poor service that is inline with the condition of your office environment. Poor impressions are often talked about, so they might even tell others that the office spaces were dirty and uninviting.

Commercial carpet cleaning ensures that your carpets look, smell and are their best. Great work environments are also talked about, so you might find staff and clients telling others of the pristinely clean offices you have!

Another great way to make your office spaces feel fresh and clean, and your staff and clients feel welcome, is by greeting them with beautiful office flowers.

Extend the life of your carpet

Looking after your carpet with regular cleaning will also help increase the life of the carpet. As with any equipment, dirt, dust and mold can deteriorate your carpet quickly and be very costly to replace. Regular cleaning will not only ensure it looks great, but that it lasts longer.

Over time, your lovely hard floors can become cracked, chipped, scratched and worn. This not only looks bad for clients and staff working and entering your buildings, but your damaged and worn floors can also harbour germs and be hard to clean. That’s why regular maintenance of your hard floors is important.

Stripping, buffing and polishing refers to the process of cleaning and restoring your hard floors. This process differs slightly, depending on the condition and type of your hard floor.

The process of restoring your hard floors may include:

• Cleaning the floor
• Stripping the old polish from the floor
• Sealing and polishing the floor
• Buffing the floor
• Machine burnishing the floor

Using high quality products and tools, this process clears away old waxes and residues and gives your floors a shiny new lease on life.

The stripping, buffing and polishing process does more than just restore that lovely shine on your floors. There are many reasons it is important to regularly maintain your hard floors:

• Removes cracks and crevices which can be hard to clean and be a trap for germs and dirt. This makes your floor more hygienic.
• Saves you money by increasing the life of your floor.
• Boosts your brand image by showing your customers and staff that you care about your workplaces and their health and safety.
• Encourages clients and staff to respect your workplace.

Just about any kind of hard floor can be cleaned and restored. This includes:

• Vinyl
• Lino
• Polished Concrete
• Tiles
• Terrazzo
• Wood
• Stone

Your Cleaners provide commercial cleaning services throughout Christchurch, Rolleston and Rangiora. If your work premises are located within these areas and you’d like a free, no-obligation quote to restore your hard floors, you can request a free quote and one of our team will get right back to you.

The outbreak of COVID-19 was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan China. On 28th February 2020 the first case of COVID-19 was reported in New Zealand.

This new coronavirus is a severe respiratory disease which can affect the lungs and airways. The pandemic has swept the world and been responsible for more than 2,000,000 deaths*.

In New Zealand, there are important steps that staff and businesses must take in order to ensure that the risk of transmission is reduced.

Sanitise and disinfect your workplaces

It has been shown that COVID-19 is effectively destroyed by isopropyl alcohol and sodium hypochlorite. Efficiently and regularly cleaning your offices including floors, windows, walls, furniture and devices will help to ensure that any chance of transmission of the virus is reduced.

It is important to wear gloves when cleaning with these ingredients in order to protect your skin. You can find a full list of disinfectants that are effective against COVID-19 here.

Clean shared equipment regularly

Where possible, it is ideal if businesses can reduce the amount of shared equipment that staff use. However, where this is not possible, focus on regularly cleaning equipment that is shared.

Think of it in terms of “touch points”. These are things that are most often touched by staff and clients, such as:

• Door handles
• Light switches
• Toilet and tap handles
• Phones
• Printers
• Kettles
• Stair rails
• Heating and cooling switches/remotes
• Alarm buttons

Ensure all touch points are cleaned regularly.

Other ways to reduce the risk of COVID-19

Aside from rigorous and regular office cleaning, there are lots of other steps employers can take to help reduce the risk of COVID-19 in their workplaces.

Wear masks

Where possible, staff can wear masks. These should be regularly replaced or if they are reusable, regularly cleaned. Staff should be trained to avoid touching their faces while wearing masks. Masks should also be worn on all public transport.

Contact tracing

In New Zealand, under any of the 4 alert levels, businesses are required to display the NZ COVID Tracer QR code poster. Clients and staff can easily scan this code on their phones using the NZ COVID Tracer App. This app tracks the places you have been and when, allowing for much faster and more efficient contact tracing in the event of an outbreak.

Work from home

Where possible, staff may be able to work remotely or from home. This reduces the risk of possible transmission.

Stay home if sick

If you or your staff are sick, stay home. If your staff display symptoms of the virus, they can call Healthline and ask about getting a free COVID-19 test.

Encourage good hygiene

Place sanitiser in easy to access locations throughout your workplace. Entries, exits, reception desks etc are great places for these. Encourage staff and clients to use it regularly and to wash their hands with soap for at least 20 seconds.

Maintain physical distancing

The WHO recommends maintaining a distance of 2 metres between people. Where possible, encourage this in your workplace.

* Cited from worldometer on 19/01/2021 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Tenancy law in New Zealand requires that rental properties be kept safe, clean and well maintained. This means that Property Managers have a few things they need to ensure are carried out.

Requirements for New Zealand Rentals

All rentals in New Zealand must be have:

• Underfloor insulation
• Ceiling insulation
• Working smoke alarms
• Safe premises that are well maintained
• Clean, hygienic living conditions

Keeping your Buildings Clean

As well as the minimum requirements, one of the most important ongoing jobs for property managers is keeping the buildings clean and properties maintained.

Windows, Carpets, Common Areas

Depending on the size of your building, you may need to clean common areas daily, and carpets and windows weekly.

The common areas of your rental building will include areas such as entryway, hallways, and common kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms.

Sanitisation and disinfection of these areas is important. Your carpets will need to be steam cleaned, and hard floors stripped, buffed and polished.

Windows need to be cleaned inside and out. You can use a pure water window cleaning method to reduce your impact on the environment.

Exterior Building Washes

Buildings need to be cleaned regularly to preserve the life of the paint and the building. You may need to hire a contractor to do this if you have a building that is more than one storey high.

Rubbish, Recycling & Green Waste

Most of your tenants rubbish, recycling and green waste should be managed through your local council rubbish collection service. Ensure your tenants have access to these bins, and know which days of the week collection is made.

You may also need to provide a general skip for additional rubbish that will need to be emptied regularly.

Property Maintenance

Driveways, footpaths, gardens and trees around your tenant building will also need to be maintained regularly.

Larger trees will need to be keep away from power lines and any dangerous limbs will need to be dealt with immediately.

How to Manage Everything

As a property manager, you should carry out regular inspections of your tenant buildings. This helps you to ensure that the tenants are keeping their spaces clean and tidy, and there is no damage or repairs that need to be done.

If you find that repairs are necessary, these should be done promptly. It helps to have a list of contractors that you can work with for each type of repair or maintenance.

A checklist is an excellent way to remember everything that you as the property manager need to remember. There are also some great apps available that can help you liase with your tenants for repairs and services that are required.

There are businesses that can help you with other services around property management such as Body Corporate Solutions who can manage your administration and insurance services for your properties.

We Can Help with all things Cleaning

We understand how busy you are as a property manager. That’s why we make the process of keeping your buildings clean, sanitary and well maintained super easy.

We can help with all things cleaning – windows, floors, common areas, exterior building washes, property maintenance and rubbish removal.

It’s as easy as one call. We use an advanced app called CleanSmart® to liase with you simply and efficiently. You can tell us what you need, what supplies you are running low on as well as provide feedback on our services to you.

Our professional team of cleaners are experts at commercial cleaning. We ensure our quality of work through our 3 level support service, so you don’t have to worry about anything.

Want to know more? Give us a call on 0800 253 266 or request a free quote.