With the ongoing pandemic, more customers are careful about hygiene and cleanliness. With a rising trend in positive cases of COVID, business owners must take it upon themselves to make sure their premises are safe for both their staff and their customers.
Experts say since public bathrooms are a hotbed for infection because of its high-touch surfaces, there’s a higher chance that viruses can spread quickly. But how do you ensure that the bathroom on your premises is safe when you have customers using it?
Enforce No Mask, No Entry Rules
Harvard Health Publishing says that the best way to protect yourself when using a public bathroom is to follow WHO’s fundamental safety steps at all times. You need to ensure that your customers are wearing masks before they can enter your business. Remember that public bathrooms are full of high-touch surfaces, which can be a haven for viruses and bacteria. So it’s best to ensure that customers aren’t potentially spreading them in that area. Minimize the points of contact in this room. For instance, you can wrap toilet paper on a toilet bidet to prevent any contact.
Is it legal to enforce No Mask, No Entry?
According to the National Law Review, for now, it is. Many of those who refuse to wear a mask cite ADA, or the Americans with Disabilities Act, as grounds for claiming discrimination if they are barred from entering without a mask. But the ADA only prohibits eligibility/screening against those who have a disability, something a healthy, non-mask wearing customer may not qualify as. You can also use state or city policies to back up your right to bar entry, but as policies often change you will need to stay up-to-date on developments.
Encourage proper bathroom use among your staff
Instill a mindset that nothing is 100% safe. If an employee will use the toilet, set procedures to have them touch only as few surfaces as possible. Encourage male staff to get close to the urinal to prevent any droplets from getting on other surfaces– it’s not only a way to ensure safety, but is a basic hygienic practice!
Check the toilet seat
Conduct thorough and frequent bathroom inspections. Visually inspect the toilet seat. Look for any signs of discoloration or dampness as these could be traces of feces or urine. In a public bathroom, it’s best to wad up a couple of toilet paper and wipe the seat off even if you do not see anything. For your business, it pays to have a clean bathroom. In a 2010 study conducted by the cleaning industry publication Cleanlink, 75 percent of customers in the US would not come back to a restaurant with a dirty bathroom. If hygiene is particularly important to your business, as, with a company in the food, health, or similar industries, a clean bathroom makes business sense.
Make sure your toilets can flush and have lids
Ideally, toilets these days should automatically flush. But if you need to do it manually, then make sure that toilet handles are properly sanitized after every customer.
Healthline says that flushing a toilet releases bacteria-laden aerosols into the air, which causes fecal bacteria to spread out and survive for several hours, so teach your staff and encourage customers to flush with the lid down.
These are only the first couple of steps you need to take to ensure your safety. Companies can also use this as a guide that they can display in areas where everyone can see. What’s essential is that you always maintain your distance from everybody while keeping your hands sanitized all the time.