Employees are the human faces of your company
Hygiene and staff presentation are key areas in facility management. Your employees are the human faces of your company, each one of them an ambassador promoting your brand. Staff with food-stained uniforms, poor personal hygiene, and shabby clothing only breed attitudes to match. At all times your staff should look crisp, clean, and ready to serve whomever steps into your facility.
If you are worried about reviews, the last thing you ever want to see is any of the following posted online:
- Things were great until a waiter walked past—he smelled so bad!
- He handed me my food, and his hands were absolutely filthy!
- I’ve never seen a receptionist with dirtier hair before. It was gross!
That is why you need to establish a “house rules” document for personal employee hygiene, and you need to lay down the law when it comes to upholding these standards at work.
Some examples of rules you may find useful are as follows:
- A daily shower is mandatory for food service professionals.
- Washing your hair daily and keeping fingernails clipped is essential.
- All clothing worn should be washed daily before being reused.
- Report symptoms of illness immediately.
- Report cuts, wounds, and injuries immediately.
- Regularly wash your hands before and after these conditions (smoking, refuse, etc.).
- Proper work clothing is to be worn at all times.
- No jewelry is to be worn with the uniform during food preparation.
- Wear gloves during certain types of procedures.
- Do not touch the inside of glasses in front of a customer.
- Always make sure that your hair is tied neatly behind your head.
The impression that your clients, customers, or patients get from your staff will determine whether they come back. Having a clean, neat team goes a long way in fostering positive attitudes, behaviors, and sentiments towards your general clientele.
When you put together your house rules document, try to involve your team in the process so that they are on board. This helps them understand the importance of practicing good hygiene and establishing good policy for the benefit of your company.
Many franchise outlets and larger chains do not maintain admirable standards of staff hygiene and cleanliness, and they suffer for it. You can exploit this weakness by ensuring that your team always looks the part. It makes for impressive review photos!
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— by David Linton, author of “Facility Hygiene Management & Maintenance: The Ultimate Guide to Maintaining a Safe and Sanitary Business” This book gives you valuable insider tips from a leading expert on commercial facility hygiene who has inspected venues in the USA and abroad. With this new book, you can learn how to develop a customer-centric cleaning strategy that will help you win the battle against the big names among your competition. When you put the information in this just released book to work for you, your business will start to really shine.
If you have a small business and are competing with large corporations, it can seem like a hopeless, uphill battle just to keep the doors open, but this book with a new strategy to give your business a real boost. You can use the one area larger businesses consistently neglect to give your premises an impeccable reputation that will earn you rave reviews, an expanding base of satisfied customers and even happier employees.