Increase Workplace Safety - Vacuuming and Mopping

This video is all about the impor­tance of main­tain­ing office main­te­nance safe­ty. There are impor­tant steps in vac­u­um­ing using a back­pack vac­u­um to attend. We then dis­cuss safe­ty when clean­ing with a mop by using wet floor signs, chem­i­cal safe­ty, and good practices.

Video Tran­scrip­tion:

Speak­er 1: Alright, Budd group team, we’re here to check in on our next task that you guys are doing on a dai­ly basis, which is vac­u­um­ing, specif­i­cal­ly vac­u­um­ing with a back­pack vac­u­um. So we are here with our sub­ject mat­ter expert Alex, who’s going to help us talk through how to make sure we’re doing it safe­ly when we’re using the back­pack vac­u­um. So Alex, before we’re going to get going with the vac­u­um, what do we need to do before we get started?

Alex: Well first­ly we had to check the fraying.

Speak­er 1: Okay, so we’re check­ing the core to make sure there’s no frays all the way through it. Good. What else do we need to check?

Alex: And we see the plug.

Speak­er 1: Okay, yes. So we have to make sure it has all three prongs, the ground prong, which often gets bro­ken off. Now, Budd group team, if you find one that has a bro­ken ground prong, don’t use it.

Con­tact your man­ag­er and let them know that it’s been bro­ken and we can either get it fixed or get that cord placed. Alright, so we’ve checked the cord. What do we need to check on the vac­u­um before we get going?

Alex: I’m check­ing the clean the vacuum.

Speak­er 1: Okay, so we’re check­ing to make sure the bag is clean. Very good. And a good rule of thumb is, if that thing is more than two thirds of the way full, we need to go ahead and emp­ty it out before we get using it, because the more weight that builds up there, the hard­er it is to car­ry and the less suc­tion that you’re get­ting. And we also need to check the fil­ter. Alright, so we check the cord and we’ve checked the vac­u­um, so I think we’re ready to get into it. So this is maybe the most impor­tant piece.

Alex is going to show us how to put the vac­u­um on and wear it cor­rect­ly. So you’ll notice as he’s putting it on, he’s already got these straps adjust­ed for his use and it’s got the vac­u­um up nice and high on his back. We want to avoid these straps get­ting sag­gy and get­ting low on your back, because it’s going to put stress on your low­er back, so keep­ing it up high allows you to keep good pos­ture. And the next impor­tant thing is to make sure we use both of the straps that are on the back­end, the one that goes around the waist, and then the one that goes up around the chest. And these are so impor­tant because they even­ly dis­trib­ute the weight of the back­pack. So often­times as I’m trav­el­ing around, I’ll see peo­ple who have the back­pack and it’s sag­ging down on their low­er back and they don’t have either one of these straps and what’s hap­pen­ing is that it’s pulling your body in the wrong direc­tion and putting a lot of stress on our low­er back that we don’t need. And it real­ly makes the back­pack feel a lot heav­ier than it tru­ly is.

So real­ly impor­tant. Keep it up high, keep these straps nice and tight and then make sure we strap it in both places. And then the last thing we want to talk about is if you’ll notice, this cord is extreme­ly long that we are using and that’s because you have a lot of ground to cov­er. So with that in mind, make sure, and I’m sure Alex would affirm this, that once we get that thing plugged in, we’re con­scious of where we’re clean­ing. We don’t want to be plugged in in this room, this office for instance, and then walk across the hall and clean the next office. We want to make sure we move the plug to the next office just in case any of our oth­er team­mates or some­one else in this build­ing would hap­pened to walk by, we would­n’t want them to trip over that cord, or we would­n’t want our­selves to trip over it. So Alex, thanks for your help. We appre­ci­ate it and we’ll let you get back to work.

Alex: Thank you.

Speak­er 4: Vac­u­um safe­ty tips. First, check the cord to make sure there are no frays and that the ground prongs are intact. Then check your vac­u­um fil­ter. If the bag is at least two thirds full, you should change it before you start vac­u­um­ing. If you’re using a back­pack vac­u­um, make sure you wear it high on your back. Attach at both the waist and the chest drafts and make sure they’re tight. Then observe the length of the cord re plug when nec­es­sary to avoid tripping.

Speak­er 1: Oh, hi Budd team. On to the next floor care tasks that we are doing on a dai­ly basis and that’s a mop­ping. So we are here with our sub­ject mat­ter expert and Angel­i­ca and she is going to show us a how to mop safe­ly. So if were mop­ping, we’re going to mop this area, what’s the first thing we want to make sure we have, the equip­ment we want to have before we get going?

Angel­i­ca: Well you always want to make sure that you have your slip resis­tant shoes on and-

Speak­er 1: That’s right and if you don’t have some, luck­i­ly she has some of her own and those are great, those have been approved by her super­vi­sor. If you don’t have those, you can use the one that the Budd group offers, which are cov­ers that can go over your nor­mal shoes and your man­ag­er should make sure that these are in your J clos­ets for you.

What else would we need?

Angel­i­ca: We need our wet floor signs.

Speak­er 1: That’s right. We’ve got to have a wet floor sign, maybe more than one depend­ing on the area we’re doing. We’ve got to make sure we keep our cus­tomers aware that we have a wet floor as well as our oth­er team­mates to make sure nobody’s slip­ping and falling. So we’ve got the equip­ment. What next, if we were going to mop this room, what will be impor­tant for us to know?

Angel­i­ca: Well, we would start from the back of the room and map our way out of the room.

Speak­er 1: Okay. So start­ing in the back. You can go ahead and start for us and show us and that will be great. So notice she’s going to ring them off out real­ly well and then start in that back left cor­ner and work her way out of the room.

Very good. And in doing this, this keeps her from ever hav­ing to walk back over the wet ser­vice. And one oth­er thing that you’ll notice that she’s doing real­ly well as instead of using a twist­ing motion, you can see that she’s using a rock­ing motion to pull the mob back and forth. Just like when we’re lift­ing box­es or pulling trash, we want to avoid twist­ing when we can because that’s an easy way to pull out our back. We want to make sure we’re using our legs instead of our back. Alright, very good. So we’ve got this thing mopped up. So my next ques­tion for you is when we fin­ish this room and we’re all done, what are we going to do with this dirty mop and this bucket?

Angel­i­ca: We’re going to pour the con­tent out and we’re going to ring our mop out and then we’re going to rinse the mop out and rinse the con­tain­er out.

Speak­er 1: Okay. So make sure we rinse them out. A lot of times when I go into some of our J clos­ets, some­body has­n’t rinsed out the mop and it’s just kind of just sit­ting there and the mop buck­et and that’s what some­times makes our clos­ets have not such a great smell, so I’m glad you said that. Very impor­tant to rinse out the buck­et and rinse out the mop thor­ough­ly and then we can hang it up so that it can dry out, air out and we can turn the mop buck­et upside down to rinse out and dry out real­ly well as well. Well, thank you so much for show­ing us how to do it safe­ly and I hope to see you again soon.

Angel­i­ca: Okay. Alright, thank you.

Speak­er 4: Mop­ping safe­ty tips. First, wear slip resis­tant shoes. If you don’t have any, make sure you use a shoe cov­er. Ask your man­ag­er where these are if you can’t find them, then place wet floor signs around the area. Place your mop in the buck­et with the appro­pri­ate chem­i­cal, wring it out, and then start mop­ping at the back of the room. This way you avoid walk­ing in the wet areas. While mop­ping use a rock­ing motion instead of a twist­ing motion, this will help your back. When you’re fin­ished, wring out the mop, emp­ty the buck­et, and then rinse the buck­et with water.

The Budd Group strives to be a God-hon­or­ing com­pa­ny of excel­lence safe­ly deliv­er­ing ser­vices in jan­i­to­r­i­al, main­te­nance, and land­scap­ing; offer­ing devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for their employ­ees; and con­tribut­ing to their community.

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