It is a fact that most business owners based in offices, or those responsible for an office building, will hire a commercial cleaning company to ensure that the aforementioned offices are kept as clean as possible for the benefit of both employees and those who visit.

The level to which a commercial cleaning service hits the highest of standards can be readily checked visually by simply walking around the areas within the office they are responsible for cleaning and checking the cleanliness or otherwise of those areas. However, an equally important role that a commercial cleaning company has cannot be so easily checked. That task is to ensure that germs are eliminated.

Given that germs are microscopic, the odds of you visually being able to see their presence or not is nigh on impossible, except if you are prepared to walk around with a microscope, which we doubt would be practical. Nevertheless, you can ensure that the work of not just cleaning but also sanitising your offices is carried out effectively, by monitoring the cleaning tasks and inspecting those areas where germs are likely to thrive.

Regular sanitation to remove germs is essential in an office, and it plays a significant role in helping ensure the health of your employees and anyone else who is likely to visit. Hopefully, you should not need convincing of that, but just in case, here are ten shocking facts about germs in offices you should know, and which should wipe away any doubts you might have had about the commercial cleaning of your offices to remove germs.

Shocking Fact #1: An office desk is likely to have 400 times MORE germs and bacteria than a toilet bowl. Further, the types of germs found on office desks are likely to be more harmful and more able to spread disease.

Shocking Fact #2: A survey of over 1,000 office workers identified that around 67% of them FAILED to follow the recommended guidelines for cleaning their workstations, thus making them more prone to illness caused by germs.

Shocking Fact #3: During an 8-hour working day, the average employee in an office shared with others is likely to touch no fewer than 4,800 surfaces that have been touched by other people.

Shocking Fact #4: The occurrence of germs and bacteria that exists on a typical office keyboard can be reduced to almost zero if that keyboard is cleaned using anti-bacterial wipes compared to normal cleaning wipes.

Shocking Fact #5: A university experiment that contaminated an office door handle with a harmless, artificial virus revealed that the virus was spread to over half the people working in that office within a timescale of just 4 hours.

Shocking Fact #6: Every inch of the surface area of an office phone can potentially contain a staggering 25,000 germs, and worse, there can be various types including bacteria and viruses such as E-coli and staph.

Shocking Fact #7: Office kitchens are a major hub of germs, many of which are likely to cause sickness and diarrhea, with research showing water coolers, fridge handles, and worktops to be three of the most contaminated with germs.

Shocking Fact #8: Studies have shown that the humble computer mouse is less safe than if a real mouse were present in an office with it containing 3 times the number of germs than the handle used to flush the toilet.

Shocking Fact #9: If one employee in an office unknowingly had a virus, it would take them a mere 4 hours to contaminate half the equipment, and more worryingly, half their fellow employees that they come into contact with.

Shocking Fact #10: Office tea and coffee mugs are a bastion for germs with a study revealing that 90% of the mugs tested had germs known to cause stomach upsets, and worse than that, the same study found a fifth of the mugs had traces of faecal matter.