Every business deals with sick days. An employee picks up a cold, comes into the office, and within a week half the team is coughing. While you cannot eliminate illness entirely, the cleanliness of your office has a significant impact on how often it happens.

Studies have shown that regular, thorough office cleaning can reduce employee sick days by 40% or more. When you consider that the average Australian worker takes around eight sick days per year, and each day costs an employer hundreds of dollars in lost productivity, the maths makes a strong case for investing in proper cleaning.

Where Germs Actually Live in Your Office

Most people think of toilets as the dirtiest part of an office, but the reality is more surprising. The surfaces people touch most frequently harbour the highest concentrations of bacteria and viruses.

Desks. The average office desk has roughly 400 times more bacteria than a toilet seat. People eat at their desks, touch their phones and keyboards constantly, and rarely clean the actual desk surface.

Keyboards and mice. These are touched for hours every day and almost never cleaned. They accumulate skin cells, food particles, and moisture.

Door handles and light switches. Every person touches these multiple times a day. A single sick employee can contaminate a door handle, and the virus can survive on the surface for hours.

Shared kitchen areas. The office kitchen is often the biggest problem zone. Sponges, tap handles, fridge doors, and kettle handles are touched by everyone and cleaned by almost no one.

Meeting rooms. Shared tables, remote controls, and whiteboards are handled by multiple people from different teams throughout the day, making meeting rooms effective at spreading illness across the whole office.

What Effective Office Cleaning Looks Like

A quick vacuum and emptying the bins is not enough. To actually reduce illness, cleaning needs to target the surfaces that spread germs.

Daily cleaning should include:

• Wiping down all desks and work surfaces with a disinfectant cleaner
• Cleaning door handles, light switches, and stair rails
• Sanitising kitchen surfaces, tap handles, and appliance buttons
• Cleaning and restocking bathrooms
• Vacuuming or mopping high-traffic areas
• Emptying all bins

Weekly cleaning should add:

• Deep cleaning kitchen appliances (microwave interior, fridge shelves, kettle)
• Wiping down meeting room tables and equipment
• Dusting shelving, windowsills, and vents
• Sanitising shared equipment like printers and phone handsets

Monthly or quarterly tasks:

• Deep cleaning carpets or hard floors
• Cleaning air conditioning vents and filters
• Thorough bathroom deep clean including grout

The Shared Kitchen Problem

If there is one area to prioritise, it is the office kitchen. It is the highest-risk space for cross-contamination. Everyone uses it, hygiene standards vary between individuals, and food waste creates additional bacterial growth.

A few practical measures make a real difference:

• Replace sponges weekly, or switch to disposable cleaning cloths
• Clean the fridge out every Friday and disinfect shelves monthly
• Wipe down all handles and surfaces at least once daily
• Keep the sink clean and free of standing water

Simple Steps Employees Can Take

Cleaning services handle the heavy lifting, but individual habits matter too:

• Wipe down your desk, keyboard, and phone with disinfectant wipes weekly
• Wash your hands after using shared equipment and before eating
• Stay home when you are sick. Presenteeism — coming to work while unwell — costs Australian businesses more than absenteeism does
• Clean up after yourself in the kitchen

The Return on Investment

Most businesses do not have the time to manage cleaning internally. Assigning duties to employees is rarely effective — people are busy with their actual jobs and standards are inconsistent.

Regular professional commercial cleaning provides the consistency that in-house efforts struggle to match. A professional cleaner follows the same process every visit, uses commercial-grade products, and ensures nothing gets missed.

For small and medium businesses on the Sunshine Coast, the cost of regular commercial cleaning is modest compared to the cost of lost productivity from sick employees. Fewer sick days mean more consistent output, better morale, and less pressure on the team members who have to pick up the slack.

Workplace hygiene is not glamorous, but it is one of the most cost-effective investments a business can make.