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Surprising Places to Find Germs in the Workplace

Nobody ever thinks of their workplace as a breeding ground for germs, but the office can actually be playground for virus and bacteria organisms. Working in close courters contributes to the spread of these unwanted visitors, especially if your coworkers are careless about washing their hands or stubborn about coming into work when their sick. That’s why understanding your surroundings and knowing where the germs thrive is extremely important to your health and productivity. The following are some surprising places to find germs in the workplace:

Telephones: Surprisingly, or not, telephones are the workplace’s top location for germs. Telephones have been known to host germs that cause pneumonia, staph, colds, flus and many other harmful bacteria and viruses. That’s one piece of office equipment that you should think twice about before sharing.
Desks: Studies have shown that you will find more bacteria, nearly 400 times more, on an average desk than an average toilet seat. This is because cleaning crews spend countless hours scrubbing down the toilet, but they rarely ever clean off the desks for fear of disturbing the employees work.
Computer keyboards: Most office cleaning companies don’t wipe down the computer keyboard because they don’t want to risk damaging it. This makes cleaning it the employee’s problem and most don’t bother.
Elevator buttons: If you work in a building with many floors, then an elevator is probably used quite frequently by employees, clients and guests. That’s hundreds of germy hands pushing the buttons a day.

Ways to prevent compilation of germs
In order to prevent your workplace from becoming a "bacteria cafeteria", it’s important for you and your coworkers to employ hygienic practices. Although you may think swapping your desk, phone and computer with antibacterial wipes or sprays will do the trick, it’s actually just spreading the germs around instead of killing them. Antibacterial products only kill a portion of the spectrum of bacteria that’s out there, so make sure you use something that says "disinfecting" or "sanitizing" in order to properly attack most bacteria and viruses. It’s also important to wash your hands instead of simply dousing them with sanitizer.

At WellBeing, we offer services that guarantee a clean, safe and healthy environment for your customers and employees. We offer state-of-the-art, hands free technology that will help your organization decrease the risk of cross contamination and exposure to harmful bacteria. We help organizations of all sizes in various industries safeguard their facilities against a variety of bacteria including: E-Coli, Hepatitis, HIV, MRSA, Staph, and Strep.

Knowing that germs foster in the workplace environment shouldn’t cause you to become paranoid- there are always going to be germs in your office. Being aware of where they are and learning healthy ways to avoid them is a better way to look at things.