The health and well-being of your employees has a direct effect on your business’ bottom line. When employees fall ill, get injured, or lose motivation, your business pays the price, so it’s in your best interest to improve the health of every space within your facility, especially those that experience the highest levels of activity. Of course, there are countless ways to cultivate a healthier work environment. Keeping up with commercial cleaning and disinfection is a must, but some surfaces require more attention than others. Porous materials like carpeting tend to absorb more contaminants than hard surfaces, for instance. Failing to keep your facility’s carpeting clean on a regular basis can threaten employee health and wellness in more ways than one.

Here we’ll explore why investing in periodic commercial carpet cleaning services is crucial for maintaining long-term employee health.

Why Investing in Periodic Commercial Carpet Cleaning Services is Crucial for Long Term Employee Health

Reduce Allergens in the Air

Allergy-causing materials are all over our environment, and some individuals are more sensitive to certain substances than others. Regardless of these details, it’s important to keep out any materials that might trigger an allergic response in any of your employees. Common allergens include dust, pollen, mold, and mildew. The presence of these substances inside your facility greatly diminished overall indoor air quality (IAQ), and the condition of your carpeting plays a major role in exacerbating or mitigating these issues.

As mentioned earlier, carpeting can quickly capture tiny particles, including those that trigger allergic responses. If these contaminants are already present in your facility’s air, they’ll eventually fall to the floor and cling to any carpeting and other soft surfaces below. At the same time, allergens trapped in your carpeting can get released back into the air when jostled by active feet, moving furniture, etc. One of the best ways to reduce the prominence of these allergens in your facility, then, is to clean your carpets regularly (typically via vacuuming) and perform deeper cleaning periodically (e.g., steam cleaning, shampooing).

Remove Germs from Rooms

Contaminants that trigger allergies aren’t the only substances that can linger on and inside your facility’s carpeting over time. Bacteria, viruses, and other disease-causing germs will also find a home in your building’s carpeting unless you actively intervene. Indeed, a single carpet may be 4,000 times more germ-ridden than the typical toilet seat, harboring more than 200,000 bacteria per square inch. While not all of these contaminants will wind up infecting employees, their presence makes for a less safe, less healthy environment on the whole. Consider that if even one employee catches a common cold due to filthy facility carpeting, this can quickly result in widespread sick days at your company, significantly slowing down productivity and putting everyone at risk. Ongoing commercial carpet care, including periodic steam cleaning, shampooing, and disinfection, helps eliminate these germs so everyone stays healthy on the job.

Prevent Slips, Trips, and Falls

Slips, trips, and falls make up a significant portion of overall workplace incidents each year, in part because so many factors are responsible for them. While slips and falls are more likely to occur on slick, hard flooring, carpets can also trigger these incidents (trips in particular). Something as small as a dropped office supply can cause an employee to trip and become seriously injured. Periodic carpet cleaning alone cannot prevent every carpet-related trip and fall, but taking care of your carpeting will allow you to locate and remove any obstacles or damaged sections that increase the risk of these incidents.

Get Rid of Any Odors

Filthy carpets can take on nasty scents. And though unpleasant smells don’t necessarily point to health hazards in your facility, they often indicate the presence of an undesirable and potentially dangerous substance or collection of substances. At the very least, these unwanted odors can become major distractions that hinder employee morale throughout the day. Vacuuming your carpeting regularly might mitigate this problem for a while, but investing in a high-quality commercial carpet cleaner solution for periodic carpet cleaning is a more surefire way to eliminate these odors and deliver a fresh scent to the room in question.

Cultivate a Brighter, Fresher Work Environment

Employee morale isn’t just dictated by interior odors – it’s also influenced by interior design and aesthetics. A dirty, drab interior tends to bring people down, worsening moods and in turn deterring productivity. Conversely, investing in a more welcoming, clean, and bright facility helps to improve the mental well-being of all employees and jumpstart productivity. Keeping up with commercial floor care goes a long way toward achieving a more positive workplace. Clean carpeting is brighter and more uniform, enhancing the appearance of the room as a whole for everyone’s benefit.

Additional Ways to Improve Employee Health at Your Facility

Common period carpet cleaning practices are just the tip of the iceberg in regards to employee health improvements at your facility. Additional services and programs to incorporate for greater employee well-being include (but are not limited to):

• Indoor air quality improvements (e.g., HVAC maintenance, air purification/disinfection, IAQ monitoring)

• Employee health (physical and mental) and hygiene programs

• Efficient, sustainable waste removal

• Optimized building maintenance protocols

• Comprehensive workplace disinfection

• …and more!

At The Budd Group, we’re determined to help our own employees and our clients live healthier, better lives. Rely on us for comprehensive facility management, maintenance, floor care, disinfection, landscaping, waste removal, and other services. To learn more about our services and values, give us a call today at 800-221-8158!