Cold and flu season hits North Texas businesses hard every year. One sick employee can quickly become five, then ten, impacting productivity and your bottom line. While you can’t prevent every illness, the right cleaning approach can significantly reduce the spread of viruses throughout your facility.
After more than 20 years serving businesses across North Texas, we’ve seen how proper facility maintenance during cold and flu season makes a measurable difference. Here’s what every business owner and facility manager should know.
The Real Cost of Cold and Flu Season
Before we dive into solutions, let’s talk about what’s at stake. The impact goes far beyond a few sniffles:
Lost Productivity — According to CDC estimates, flu-related absenteeism costs U.S. employers billions annually in lost productivity. Even employees who come to work sick operate at reduced capacity.
Chain Reaction Illness — One sick person touching door handles, light switches, and shared equipment can expose dozens of coworkers within hours.
Customer Impact — Visible illness among staff or an obviously neglected facility damages customer confidence and can drive business elsewhere.
Increased Healthcare Costs — More sick employees mean higher healthcare utilization and potential impacts on your insurance rates.
The good news? A strategic cleaning approach can break the transmission chain before illness spreads through your entire workforce.
High-Touch Surfaces: Where Viruses Spread Fastest
Most people don’t realize how quickly viruses move through a facility. Research shows that a single contaminated surface can lead to virus spread to 40-60% of surfaces and people in an office within just 2-4 hours.
The biggest culprits for virus transmission:
Door handles and push plates — Touched by every person entering or exiting, these are virus superhighways. This includes entrance doors, bathroom doors, office doors, and interior doors throughout your facility.
Light switches — Frequently touched but rarely thought about during routine cleaning.
Elevator buttons and handrails — Especially problematic in multi-story facilities where hundreds of people touch the same surfaces daily.
Shared equipment — Copy machines, printers, time clocks, and coffee makers see constant contact from multiple people.
Desks and workstations — Keyboards, mice, phones, and desk surfaces harbor germs all day long.
Break room surfaces — Refrigerator handles, microwave buttons, and countertops are touched constantly throughout the day.
The key during cold and flu season is increasing the frequency and thoroughness of cleaning for these high-contact areas. Daily attention isn’t enough when viruses are actively circulating.
Restrooms: Your First Line of Defense
Commercial restrooms deserve special attention during flu season. They’re naturally high-risk areas where proper cleaning and adequate supplies make a critical difference.
Why restrooms matter so much:
Restrooms see constant traffic, creating numerous opportunities for cross-contamination. Faucet handles, soap dispensers, door handles, and stall locks are touched by dozens or hundreds of people daily. When these areas aren’t properly maintained, they become illness transmission hotspots.
The supply component — Having cleaning protocols in place means nothing if your restrooms run out of soap, paper towels, or toilet paper. Empty dispensers force employees to skip proper handwashing or use ineffective alternatives, undermining your entire infection control strategy.
Professional restroom maintenance during flu season goes beyond basic cleaning. It requires attention to detail, proper disinfection timing, and consistent restocking to ensure supplies never run out when employees need them most.
Common Areas and Shared Spaces
Conference rooms, lobbies, waiting areas, and break rooms need heightened attention when viruses are circulating. These spaces see diverse traffic from both employees and visitors, creating perfect conditions for illness spread.
Focus areas in shared spaces:
Seating — Chairs, sofas, and benches in waiting areas and conference rooms need regular cleaning, especially armrests and headrests where hands and faces make contact.
Tables and countertops — Any surface where people eat, work, or set personal items requires frequent disinfection.
Reception areas — Front desks, sign-in tablets or pens, and any materials guests handle need constant attention.
Kitchen and break areas — Beyond basic daily cleaning, appliance handles, cabinet knobs, and shared utensils need thorough regular disinfection.
The challenge is that these spaces often fall between the cracks of routine cleaning schedules, getting daily attention that isn’t intensive enough during high-risk seasons.
Floors: The Often-Forgotten Factor
When people think about cold and flu prevention, they rarely think about floors. But consider this: anything that touches a contaminated surface eventually ends up on the floor. Purses, briefcases, bags, dropped items, and shoe bottoms all transfer germs to floor surfaces.
Those germs then get tracked throughout your facility and can be transferred back to hands when people retrieve dropped items or children play on the floor.
Increased floor cleaning frequency during flu season, particularly in entryways and high-traffic areas, helps reduce the overall viral load in your facility.
Air Quality Matters Too
While surface cleaning gets most of the attention, the air your employees breathe plays a significant role in illness transmission. Dust, allergens, and airborne particles can all contribute to respiratory problems and make people more susceptible to illness.
Regular vacuuming with HEPA filtration, proper carpet cleaning, and attention to dust accumulation on vents, blinds, and high surfaces all contribute to better air quality. While professional cleaning can’t replace proper HVAC maintenance, it works hand-in-hand with your building systems to create a healthier environment.
The Consistency Challenge
Here’s where many businesses struggle: maintaining heightened cleaning standards consistently throughout the entire cold and flu season. It’s not enough to deep clean once in October and hope for the best. Viruses circulate continuously from fall through spring, and your cleaning approach needs to match that reality.
Professional cleaning services provide the consistency that’s difficult to achieve with in-house staff alone. When your regular employees call in sick, your facility still needs proper cleaning—perhaps more than ever. Professional teams have the depth and backup to maintain standards even when illness hits your own organization.
Why Professional Cleaning Makes the Difference
We’ve seen countless businesses try to handle intensified flu season cleaning in-house, only to find themselves overwhelmed. Here’s why professional services typically deliver better results:
Proper products and equipment — Professional-grade disinfectants and cleaning equipment work more effectively than retail products, and experienced teams know proper dwell times and application methods.
Trained staff — Professional cleaners understand cross-contamination prevention, proper disinfection techniques, and the science behind effective cleaning.
Consistency and reliability — Professional services maintain standards even when your own staff is out sick or overwhelmed with their primary responsibilities.
Comprehensive approach — Professional teams catch the details that busy in-house staff miss, from high surfaces to overlooked high-touch points.
Supply management — Professional services can include supply restocking, ensuring your facility never runs out of critical items like soap and paper products.
A Customized Approach for Your Facility
Every facility is different. A busy medical office has different needs than a manufacturing facility or retail space. Traffic patterns, employee counts, public access areas, and existing cleaning schedules all factor into the right approach.
That’s why we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. The right flu season strategy considers your specific facility, your budget, and your risk factors. Some businesses need daily intensified cleaning throughout the season. Others benefit from strategic deep cleaning combined with enhanced protocols for specific high-risk areas.
Don’t Wait Until Illness Strikes
The time to prepare for cold and flu season is before the first wave of illness hits your workforce. Once viruses start circulating through your facility, you’re in damage control mode rather than prevention mode.
With over 20 years of experience serving North Texas and Southern Oklahoma businesses, we’ve helped countless facilities reduce illness-related absenteeism through strategic cleaning approaches. We handle the cleaning details so you can focus on running your business, even during the challenging cold and flu months.
Ready to protect your workforce and your productivity this season? Let us create a customized cleaning plan that addresses your facility’s specific needs and keeps your team healthier all season long.
Contact us today for a personalized quote.
