If you own a store or retail property, cleanliness has likely always been a priority. Now, it can make or break your business.
Whether your property is open or planning to reopen, you face two challenges:
- Minimizing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in your space.
- Ensuring employees and customers feel safe to enter.
Here are some essential tips for cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting your retail property during a pandemic.
1. Start with a full deep cleaning
To be as safe as possible, take a day to deep clean your entire space from top to bottom. Not only will this allow you to more effectively sanitize your space, it will demonstrate that you’re making the extra effort.
To make sure it’s done properly, consider hiring a team of sanitation specialists equipped with the tools and experience for viral disinfection.
2. Rethink your space (especially your tables)
Keeping the virus away is about more than active cleaning. Simple alterations to your floor plan and layout can make a massive difference. Here are a few ways to do just that:
- Reduce the number of tables or displays to create space for people to move around while keeping their distance.
- Clothing stores may want to close off dressing rooms for the time being, while food retail locations should take extra care to space out their tables.
- Some surfaces are harder to clean than others. Considering replacing wooden tables that can be difficult to disinfect with solid white surfaces to make cleaning your space easier.
- Install a protective plexiglass barrier between registers and customers. Place your credit card machines behind the barrier. Avoid cash payment, if possible.
- Reduce customer capacity, if possible, and place an employee outside your entrance to ensure capacity isn’t exceeded. This individual can also kindly remind customers of changes to your space to avoid confusion and simplify their experience.
3. Establish daily cleaning routines
With strangers coming in and out of your space everyday and the possibility of asymptomatic carriers, you’ll want to implement rigorous routine cleanings multiple times per day to minimize risk. Here are a few best practices:
- Frequently clean high-touch, high-traffic areas.
- Wipe down and sanitize hard surfaces.
- Clean bathrooms thoroughly every hour. If your bathroom is typically open to the public, consider making it employees only.
- Implement ongoing professional cleanings, once a week or even multiple times per week.
4. Take your cues from the experts
Guidelines continue to change as the world learns more about COVID-19. Keep up to date with best practices from the CDC, certified cleaning professionals, and other retail owners you trust. Here are some of the latest guidelines related to cleaning:
- Make sure cleaners wear disposable masks, gloves, and, when necessary, cleaning suits or gowns so that they are fully protected.
- Employees should wash their hands frequently, both while cleaning and throughout the workday. Wash with warm water and soap for at least twenty seconds.
- To sanitize surfaces, clean them with water and soap first. Then, disinfect with a certified disinfectant solution or diluted bleach solution.
- Clean the entire space, but be sure to prioritize high-touch areas like countertops, light switches, handles, toilets, and more.
5. Post signs & train your team
Sanitizing and disinfecting your retail space is essential. But if customers don’t know what you’re doing, they may not come. And if employees don’t know how to conduct themselves, your space is still at risk. To make sure this doesn’t happen, consider the following:
- Post signs with reminders of your cleaning protocols & safety measures around your store. Including visuals, graphics & icons has shown to be highly effective.
- Write up a plan detailing how employees should 1) clean the space and 2) follow proper COVID-19 protocols while working. Set aside time to train your employees so there’s no question of what they should do.
- Check out more tips for reopening safely here.
6. Make an emergency plan
There’s no other way around it: you have to plan for the worst. If someone on your team or in your store tests positive for COVID-19, you need to be ready with a plan in place.
- First, close off the space for at least 24 hours before sanitizing.
- Next, sanitize & disinfect the entire space. Make sure your cleaners have the proper equipment and are taking proper safety measures. Again, this is a time to hire the professionals.
Looking to sanitize your space? Look no further.
Get on-demand sanitizing, disinfecting and deep cleaning services. At Integrity Services, our team of commercial cleaning professionals has the experience and expertise to help keep your building clean and safe.
Need your building sanitized? Contact us with the form at the top of this page, email us at info@integrityservicecompanies.com or give us a call at 877-663-6766.