When COVID struck and the UK went into lockdown Harvest were not in a position to close their doors as we are a vital food supplier to the care industry.
After the Hospitality customers closed their doors we quickly realised we had to develop a new revenue stream to ensure we could continue to offer this vital service to our care customer base. After a few moments of deliberation, we (overnight) set up a home delivery service to members of the public as well supporting various local authorities and organisations with local care packages.
Operating safely, protecting our team and our customers have been of paramount importance to us while we have been continuing to operate. Putting measures in places such as safe distancing, hand washing, and sanitising were only the start. We believe these measures are why we have had such a minimal number of the team develop COVID like symptoms over the past few months. Now with many of our customers planning their own reopening and many other businesses also getting ready to open we thought we would share with you what we believe helped us. We hope that you can find something that is of use to you and that the information is relevant.
Here is our 12 point guide to keeping our workplace safe:
- Sanitise workstations and equipment at the start and end of each person’s shift
- Close / restrict the number of entry and exit points to control movement at the site
- Sanitise all door handles, equipment, taps, bannisters and all other touch areas regularly throughout the day – we actually employed another cleaner to continually sanitise touch surfaces
- Regularly remind the team about keeping 2 metres apart and put relevant signage and markings around the building
- Avoid visiting teammates in other offices, use the phone and video conferencing where possible
- Keep alcogel at all desks, doorways and other areas of the building
- Make sanitiser spray and wipes freely available in every office and warehouse
- Use face masks when social distancing is not possible – all our team members have been issued with reusable washable masks
- Encourage and remind about regular hand washing
- Relocate and reorganise workstations and processes to move staff apart
- Refresh information posters to keep up the Covid-19 message by moving them around the site.
- Act on feedback received to amend operation and processes.
We also use Moore’s cleaning for our office cleaning solutions. Moores Cleaning Services Ltd is an established contract cleaning company with nearly 40 years experience. In the fight against the Coronavirus, they have sourced a product to help keep your working environment bug free.
Moores Cleaning Services Ltd are now able to offer a service to dis-infect your building/offices by using a fogging treatment (Biomisting) which causes minimum disruption and downtime. The process works by filling a room with a fine mist of 10-micron particles (1 micron = 1 millionth of a metre). As the particles settle onto all surfaces the product kicks into action, killing all bacteria spores and viruses within seconds. This is a great method to use, giving peace of mind to you and your staff that will be returning, or entering in to, a dis-infected working environment.
The product also has a reactive barrier that keeps fighting bugs for a further 72 hours. It is so effective that Moores Cleaning Services Ltd are now using this for their daily cleaning regimes in all of their contracts. This means the reactivation and bug-killing continues throughout the day providing a safer, more hygienic working environment. The added benefit to this means bugs, in general, are killed, reducing staff sickness levels and increasing productivity.
Biomisting is the most effective way of killing germs but is a one kill solution. If you are thinking of using this as a one-off treatment, we strongly advise the following hygiene controls are in place for anybody using the space after Biomisting; respiratory hygiene, cough etiquette, hand washing and physical distancing. If you are interested in more information of our contract cleaning services, or in the Biomisting, please do not hesitate to contact nick@moorescleaning.co.uk