Every November I watch the same thing happen. One person comes into the office with a cough, and two weeks later half the team is home sick. Most people blame bad luck. After 32 years in this industry, I can tell you a lot of it comes down to how a building is cleaned.
Last season in BC, illness visits peaked in late December and early January before the provincial health officer declared the season over in March. That means the next eight weeks are your window to get ahead of it, not react to it.
Here is what actually makes a difference, and what is mostly for show.
Clean, sanitize, disinfect: they are not the same thing
These three words get used like they mean the same thing. They do not, and mixing them up is where most cold and flu programs fall apart.
| Step | What it does | When you need it |
|---|---|---|
| Cleaning | Removes dirt, oils and grime from a surface | Always first. Disinfectant cannot work through a layer of dirt. |
| Sanitizing | Reduces germs to a lower, safer level | Food contact surfaces, break room counters |
| Disinfecting | Kills the germs listed on the product label | High-touch surfaces during cold and flu season |
The order matters. If you spray disinfectant on a dirty door handle and wipe it off, you have mostly moved the dirt around. Clean first, then disinfect.
Focus on the touchpoints, not the whole room
Cold and flu viruses travel on hands. Someone touches their face, then a door handle, then the next person touches that same handle. Disinfecting every surface in a building does not help much. Disinfecting the right surfaces, often enough, helps a lot.
These are the ones my teams prioritize from November through March:
- Offices: door handles and push plates, elevator buttons, light switches, shared keyboards and phones, printer and copier panels, boardroom tables, coffee machine buttons, fridge and microwave handles
- Schools: classroom door handles, desktops, shared supplies, water fountains, washroom taps and stall locks, railings, gym equipment
- Strata buildings: lobby entry doors, intercom panels, elevator buttons inside and out, mailbox areas, amenity room and gym equipment, garbage room handles, parkade door push bars
- Every building: washroom taps, flush handles, soap and towel dispensers, and the inside handle of the washroom door
That last one is the one most people forget. Clean hands touch a dirty handle on the way out.
Contact time: the step almost everyone skips
This is the one I teach hardest in my Building Service Worker classes, because it is the one that gets skipped most.
Every disinfectant has a contact time, sometimes called dwell time. It is printed on the label, and it is how long the surface has to stay visibly wet for the product to actually kill what it claims to kill. Depending on the product, that can be under a minute or as long as ten.
Spray and wipe straight away, and you have used a disinfectant as an expensive cleaner. The fix is simple: spray a group of touchpoints, move on, and come back to wipe once the contact time has passed. A trained cleaner builds this into their route without adding much time at all.
Green does not mean weak
I get asked this every fall: if you only use green products, are you really killing anything?
Yes. Cleaning Angels is Green Clean Certified and we use EcoLogo certified products, but green is not a reason to compromise on disinfection. Two things to look for on any disinfectant used in your building:
- A DIN on the label. In Canada, disinfectants need a Drug Identification Number from Health Canada. No DIN means the kill claims have not been reviewed.
- The right chemistry for the job. Hydrogen peroxide based disinfectants break down into water and oxygen, are gentler on the people breathing them all day, and are effective against cold and flu viruses when used with the correct contact time.
Harsh chemicals and strong smells are not proof that something is clean. A building that smells like bleach is often a building where someone used too much product and skipped the cleaning step.
Stop moving germs from room to room
A cleaner with one cloth for the whole floor is not cleaning. They are delivering germs from the washroom to the break room. Three habits fix this:
- Colour-coded microfibre. One colour for washrooms, another for kitchens, another for general surfaces. A washroom cloth never touches a desk.
- Fresh cloths, often. Fold microfibre into quarters to get eight clean faces, and switch to a new cloth when they are used up, not when it looks dirty.
- Clean to dirty, top to bottom. Start with the cleanest areas and finish in the washrooms. Work from high surfaces down so dust and drips land on areas not yet cleaned.
None of this costs more. It is training and discipline, and it is exactly what separates a professional crew from someone just wiping things down.
Your cold and flu season checklist
If you manage an office, school or strata building, here is what I would do this week:
- Ask your cleaning provider which touchpoints they disinfect, how often, and with what product
- Check that the disinfectant has a DIN and that your crew knows its contact time
- Add a midday touchpoint pass in high-traffic areas from November to March
- Make sure soap, paper towel and hand sanitizer dispensers are checked and refilled every visit
- Put hand sanitizer at entrances, elevators and shared kitchens
- Ask whether your crew uses colour-coded microfibre
Hand washing is still the single best defence, and BC public health continues to recommend it. Your job is to make it easy: full dispensers, clean sinks, and touchpoints that are not quietly passing illness around.
Want a second set of eyes on your building? I am happy to walk through your current cleaning scope and point out where the gaps are, no obligation. Call us at 250-808-7810 or reach out through our contact page.
