A 2021 study revealed that over 50% of people felt anxious about contracting coronavirus in the workplace. To ease anxiety for commercial tenants, businesses must emphasize providing building users with health and safety measures.
What are the new pandemic standards for hygiene in commercial buildings? Keep reading to learn how you can increase hygiene in your commercial properties to comply with new standards and ease anxiety for your tenants.
Social Distancing Layouts
One of the essential considerations for property managers following the pandemic is new layouts that promote social distancing. Social distancing was government mandated at the height of the pandemic. Building designers needed to design layouts with social distancing in mind.
Here are some of the best ways you can implement social distancing design in your commercial property:
- Self-serve checkout and facilities – to maintain social distancing, you can implement self-checkouts and offer building users the opportunity to avoid close contact with others in the establishment.
- Cubicle partitions – you can design office layouts with social distancing in mind by installing cubicle partitions to separate people and discourage close contact.
- Seating arrangements – you should ensure any seating in your building is placed strategically to allow social distancing bubbles to sit together but separate from those outside their bubble.
- Installing HEPA air filters – to make social distancing in your establishment more effective, you can install HEPA air filters to ensure a flow of clean air in the building.
In addition to taking these measures to implement social distancing building layouts, you can implement a staggered or flexible working pattern to ensure your building is never overcrowded and reduce the number of people in your building at once.
Hygienic Building Security
To ensure your building promotes health and safety standards, you can invest in hygiene-based technologies for your building security. Some of these sanitary building security installations include:
- Touchless access control – touchless access control is a cloud-based security technology that allows users to enter the building and unlock doors using mobile credentials. Using mobile credentials for access, users can enter the building without touching a button or pin pad. These are often a hotspot for germs. Instead, they can simply wave their hand over the access control reader. Then the motion will trigger remote communication with their mobile device via Bluetooth, WiFi, and cellular. Implementing this technology from commercial security system companies can significantly lower the risk of germs spreading between building users.
- Wellness attestation – you can prevent symptomatic individuals from entering your building by implementing wellness attestation software. The software integrates with your access control system to provide users with coronavirus screening surveys they must fill out before entering the building. If they are showing symptoms of coronavirus, they will not be allowed to enter the building.
- Temperature reading – you can implement automated temperature reading at your building’s entrance to determine whether users have a raised temperature before they enter the building. If their temperature is too high, you can restrict their access and recommend that they self-isolate or take a coronavirus test.
Increased Surface Cleaning
Building managers must invest in more thorough cleaning services with the current health crisis. There are common touchpoints in buildings that users must come into contact with through the building. These touchpoints include door handles, railings, and elevator buttons. You must implement more stringent cleaning procedures to prevent these touchpoints from becoming germs hubs.
Common touch points should be wiped down regularly throughout the day with sanitizing cleaning products to ensure they stay germ-free. You might also consider common coating touchpoints with antimicrobial surfacing material.
Hand Sanitizers
To give building users more control over their health and safety, you should provide hand sanitizing stations throughout your building. You should place these sanitizing stations strategically around the facility. This way users can clean their hands after opening a door, using the bathroom, and touching hand railings or elevator buttons. Think about areas in your building that require users to handle commonly objects and provide sanitizing stations in these places. Delegate the task of refilling hand sanitizer stations to cleaning staff to ensure building users always have access to it.
Hygiene Signage And Checklists
You should include hygiene signage and checklists for employees and visitors in your establishment to ensure that all building users practice good hygiene. For instance, you should have signage in your bathrooms instructing building users on how to wash their hands properly.
You might also consider including signage and checklists throughout your building to promote social distancing and enforce mask policies. This can make building occupants more aware of the spread of germs as they go about their day. It’s also a good idea to move your signs so that users do not become blind to them over time.
Summary
The pandemic has created a need for building managers to provide more measures to prevent the spread of germs. The nature of hazards in the workplace is changing, and businesses need to adapt. Changing things like their building layout, cleaning procedures, and security tools to provide a more hygienic experience for users.