Promoting Effective Hand & Personal Hygiene In Shared Spaces Is Critical To Reducing Germ Spread

By Lauren Belskie, Marketing Operations Manager for Imperial Dade

Lauren Belskie

Successfully navigating cold and flu season requires a heightened focus on hand and personal hygiene to ensure safe and productive environments. This is especially important for shared spaces like offices, schools, retail stores, and restaurants.

Germs spread quickly and easily through these facilities because of the increased number of high touch surfaces and communal areas such as shared workstations, restrooms, break rooms, and cafeterias.

Maintaining a healthy and safe environment is a joint responsibility, relying on both cleaning staff and individuals who use the space—staff, students, visitors, and customers alike—to work together toward this common goal.

Prevention begins with encouraging healthy habits and ensuring the facility is clean and well-maintained.

Hand Hygiene Tips For A Clean & Safe Facility

• Implement a Comprehensive Hand Hygiene Program: Hand hygiene has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to reduce germ transmission and minimize the spread of illnesses.

Germs are easily transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, such as when shaking hands, or when coming into high contact surfaces. High touch surfaces are any area or object frequently touched by people throughout the day. This includes doorknobs, light switches, copier buttons, and phones.

Establishing a hand hygiene program can be as straightforward as encouraging individuals to follow proper handwashing techniques and using hand sanitizer regularly.

• Display Correct Handwashing Procedures Around the Facility: According to the CDC, regular handwashing with soap and clean water is one of the most effective ways to stay healthy.

Post signs in cafeterias, restrooms, and break rooms to remind people that handwashing is the first line of defense in preventing the spread of illness.

Signage should include the proper steps and scenarios for handwashing as well as best practices.

• Install Hand Sanitizer Stands in High Traffic Areas: When soap and water aren’t readily available, or to reduce germ spread between washes, hand sanitizers with at least 60% alcohol are an effective alternative.

In fact, supplying hand sanitizer at workstations and in high-traffic communal areas can help lower healthcare claims for hygiene-preventable illnesses, such as the flu, by up to 20%.

The best way to encourage frequent hand sanitizer use is to make it easily accessible. Place bulk hand sanitizer dispensers in high traffic and communal areas like entryways, cafeterias, break rooms, and meeting rooms.

• Provide Individual Hand Sanitizers for Use at Individual Workstations or Tables: To further promote the use of hand sanitizer, offer portable, single serve, or personal-use hand sanitizers at individual workstations and tables.

Personal Hygiene Tips For A Clean & Safe Facility

• Stay Home When Sick: Encourage sick staff, visitors, and customers to stay home when experiencing flu-like symptoms or feeling ill, limiting the number of germs that make it inside the facility.

• Establish Flexible Sick Policies for Employees: Oftentimes, staff come to work sick because of fear or repercussions. In all reality, sick employees are less productive and more likely to spread illness ultimately costing the business more. Promote flexible sick policies such as remote work to avoid this.

• Post Gentle Reminders for Guests at Entry Ways: Install signage at entrances reminding visitors and guests to stay home if they feel unwell.

Communicating policy at the front of the facility will not only encourage sick individuals to keep germs at bay but also reinforce your facility’s commitment to health and safety.

Encourage Proper Respiratory And Cough Etiquette

While the responsibility for maintaining proper respiratory and cough etiquette falls largely on an individual, facility managers can help encourage good habits by providing tissues in common areas such as entryways, reception desks, and other shared areas.

• Cover Nose and Mouth When Coughing or Sneezing: Best practice is to encourage people to cough or sneeze into a facial tissue and dispose of it right away.

A single sneeze can release over 40,000 aerosolized droplets carrying millions of germs. When tissues aren’t available, occupants may resort to using their hands to cover coughs or sneezes, often spreading germs to high-touch surfaces, like door handles, which can increase the spread of illness.

If providing facial tissue in common areas isn’t an option, encourage people to cough or sneeze into the bend of their elbow to contain the spread of droplets.

Facility Maintenance Tips For A Clean & Safe Facility

• Increase Cleaning Frequency: Germs are inevitable, and the contamination of surfaces is on-going. Every time someone touches a doorknob germs are transferred.

While germs can never be eradicated, more frequent cleaning and disinfection of high touch surfaces, especially during peak cold and flu season can help reduce the spread.

And, don’t leave all the dirty work to the facility team. Empower building occupants to take their health and safety into their own hands. Provide disinfecting wipes for people to use at their own will. Disinfecting wipes should also be placed in easily accessible and highly visible areas in high traffic areas.

• Install Touch-Free or Hands-Free Devices: Limiting high touch surfaces is a great way for facilities to reduce germ spread. Some illness-causing pathogens can live on surfaces for hours. And, while many are facing staffing shortages, increasing cleaning frequency may not be an option.

Enter touchless or hands-free devices. Eliminating touch points will not only reduce the number of surfaces for germ spread but also the number of surfaces janitorial members need to tend to, ultimately allowing them to focus on other high priority work.

Touchless alternatives include automatic paper towel dispensers, touch-free faucets, automatic hand sanitizer, automatic soap dispensers, auto flush valves, hands-free door openers, and touchless garbage cans.

Whether it’s through strategically placed sanitizers, educational signage, or adopting new maintenance routines, these efforts will help enhance facility cleanliness as well as reinforce a commitment to wellness to the public.

Lauren Belskie is the Marketing Operations Manager for Imperial Dade, where she focuses on B2B marketing and content strategy. She is the driving force behind the Imperial Dade Learning Center, where she serves as both a major contributor and primary editor, crafting content that empowers businesses to build safer, healthier, and cleaner environments. Lauren leads the development of a wide range of educational resources—including articles, videos, and training sessions—tailored to meet the needs of professionals in the janitorial, foodservice, and broader B2B markets. Through her work, Lauren combines her expertise in content marketing with a deep understanding of industry trends, helping businesses stay informed and equipped with practical, creative solutions. For more information on Imperial Dade’s services, visit imperialdade.com.