The work of air purification has helped businesses come through the COVID-19 crisis in a much healthier way, allowing them to mitigate the risks of employees using office spaces as the virus still moves around the nation. An air purifier can be a great tool in reducing chances of many illnesses.
Direct365 have worked hard to provide many small businesses with methods to reduce the risk of COVID-19 in their workplace, including hand washing, sanitiser, and purification.
PHS Group’s air care white paper, that focuses on purification in the school sector, sets out a strong argument that purification should be part of the tactic for a post-COVID working environment. While is does concentrate on education, a lot of the findings cross over into the wider concern about air quality in work.
Here, we aim set out how purification can help your business.
How could air contaminants be harming your business and staff?
Firstly, it’s right to say that air quality should have been a focus for your businesses much before the COVID-19 pandemic. That has, however, heightened awareness. And rightly so. Air contaminants can cause illnesses such as coughs and colds and if your staff have a pre-existing condition, can aggravate it.
This could impact a number of things. In 2020, the average sick days of employees per annum was 5.8. This number has stayed fairly steady for the last few years, including this first year of COVID. This figure, while not being incredibly high, loses a member of staff for over a working week per year. For a business of 52 people, that’s approx. one person/function missing on sickness each week. That’s without annual leave affecting productivity and output. With this in mind, sickness costs UK businesses £14 billion. That’s a lot of money that even small changes could affect.
According to the Health and Safety Executive, the main factor in workplace sickness is minor illnesses (accounting for 26% of absence). These sicknesses are defined as coughs, colds and similar scale illness. Given that people spend over a third of their time in work, it is safe to say that much of these illnesses come from the workplace. Workplace illness breeds workplace illness. Why not try and decrease the chances of germs spreading by using extra help. Extra help like an air purification unit.
Our purification service can improve air quality in your workplace and can neutralize 99.9% of viruses. Click here for details.
What does an air purifier do?
An air purification unit removes toxins or particles from the air that could be harmful to humans. They target these aerosols through a fan and a number of filters to suck air through, remove the particles and eject clean air out the other side. This includes COVID-19 particles and other illnesses, depending on the quality of the air purifier.
What are the solutions?
It’s a good question! The solution doesn’t have just one dimension. Just as air purification isn’t the only answer, neither is simply washing hands and cleaning surfaces. Your plan for reducing illness and avoiding a COVID outbreak needs to revolve around a combination of everything.
Buying an air purification unit can help keep the environment healthy and clean. This, coupled with utilising open windows can dilute any sickness bugs. Then clearing, sanitising regularly and wearing masks will continue to help keep people safe, especially when there is plenty of mixing in offices and public spaces.
For a greater chance at keeping work sickness to a minimum, use our air purification service. Our friendly and knowledgeable team are on hand to advise you on how best to tackle this issue. Find out more here.