With the outbreak of the coronavirus and the introduction of social distancing, many of our stores have taken measures to ensure our safety and prevent further spread of this awful virus.
However, with social distancing measures in place, there is still the potential risk of the virus coming into your store, putting yourself, your staff and customers at risk.
To keep yourself, your staff and customers safe, take a look at these tips.
Create cleaning stations
If your store provides customers with trollies make sure that you have cleaning stations in place so that customers can clean their trolley handle before entering your store. If you don’t have a cleaning station have a member of staff stationed at the front of the store ready to clean customers trolley handles.
Clean high touch areas
Throughout the day, many customers will frequently touch a lot of areas within your store. To prevent the potential infection and spread of the Coronavirus, regularly clean high touch areas such as basket and trolley handles, refrigerator doors and freezer slider doors, escalator and stair handrails, lift buttons, self-scanners and self-checkout screens, pin-card machines and countertops.
Encourage customers to pay contactless
With many retailers increasing their contactless payment limit to minimise the potential of the coronavirus spreading, encourage your customers to pay by contactless payment instead of using cash or the pin-card machine. (if they do pay by cash or by pin machine, make sure that you have sanitiser close by to sanitise your hands and machine).
Use disinfectant products
There are many cleaning products on the market. However, many are not suitable for commercial use as they aren’t able to kill large numbers of viruses on surfaces. When cleaning, use products that are able to be used in a commercial setting and are proven by the cleaning industry to disinfect and kill viruses off of surfaces.
Colour code
When cleaning it is important that there is no cross-contamination between surfaces. To avoid cross-contamination use colour-coded cloths and equipment so you know which colours are to be used for which area within your store. Wear PPE
When you or your staff are cleaning the store, make sure that you wear PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) such as disposable gloves and aprons. This prevents cleaning chemicals from damaging clothes and irritating hands and prevent viruses from being spread around.
When disposing of gloves and used disposable aprons, dispose them into a separate black bag and store securely for 72 hours. After 72 hours dispose of the bag with the general waste.
Deep clean
To give your staff and customers that added level of security and protection against the coronavirus, give your store a deep clean. This will help remove dirt in areas that are often overlooked or hard to reach when regularly cleaning.
For extra protection against the Coronavirus, many commercial cleaning companies are offering Bio-misting services that allow them to spray a fine mist of disinfectant across large areas – killing viruses and creating a reactive barrier against them.
If you would like to protect your staff and customers from the Coronavirus then take a look at our cleaning services here or get in touch with us on 01656 333336