Are you looking to clean up your act in the workplace? So you’ve noticed your staff and visitors turning their noses up at the bathroom facilities? This can be quite embarrassing. As long as the fixtures and fittings themselves are fine, like for example the toilets, cubicle’s, sinks, flooring and tiles; the rest can be done fairly cheaply! You’ll want to look at how you freshen the room (some would say most importantly), what facilities you provide for washing the hands, and whether you will opt for hand dryers or disposable hand towels. This is where Office 365 can help.

Hand Soap – We highly recommend when kitting out your washroom with all the small janitorial supplies, that you do NOT consider soap bars. Soap bars can be stolen (petty yes, but it happens!), they leave a mess around your sink, they can dry up and crack, and often they spread more germs than they clean. Instead opt for a hand soap dispenser. We would highly recommend one which is fixed to your wall so that these cannot be stolen too, plus, they enable you to refill them. Try our Purell Touch Free Dispenser featured, perfect for minimising bacteria spread as it will not come into contact with dirty hand, plus is available for just £6.82 inc VAT!

Hand Drying – Either way, the disposable hand towel and the hand dryer do the job. You could look at either one and say it is more harmful to our environment than the other, for example, disposable ones involve waste, however do come in recycled options (like our 5 Star Recycled Hand Towels featured), and a hand dryer does not involve waste, accept uses energy, however can come in low energy consumption. The choice is ultimately up to you. My personal recommendation is both. There is nothing more annoying when you’re in a hurry than having to stand and wait for your turn to use the hand dryer, or having to wait for your hands to dry while using the dryer. In many cases people run for a cubical to use toilet paper which is very wasteful and ends up clogging toilets. The ideal bathroom in my opinion would have recycled hand towels and a fast action hand dryer! Try our Veltia High Speed Hand Dryer featured!

Air Freshener – When freshening your facilities, please keep the fragrance topped up! It is a pet hate for staff and visitors to use facilities which stink! Not to mention you may have to deal with welcoming clients or viable customers to your premises while a ‘waft’ also heads their way to greet them! We suggest you do not opt for the cheapest option; these can often smell as bad as the odour itself! However maybe you’d like to try for yourself before you go with a more permanent option. We suggest that you choose an air freshener which does not require physically spraying; choose an option which releases fragrance by itself. A non permanent option would be our Glade Gel Air Freshener featured which is only £2.68 inc VAT! However a good permanent option is our Tcell Starter Kit featured which fragrances and neutralises odours continuously.

For more information simply visit our site where you will find our full range of supplies. Or alternatively call to speak to a member of our team on 0870 766 1624.

After this morning’s – clammy in comparison to previous mornings – walk to school, I think we’d all agree that spring is finally here! After the long, furiously cold and depressing winter we’ve just endured, it couldn’t have arrived soon enough! So now it’s a case of switching warm winter coats for lighter spring jackets, swapping jumpers for sweatshirts (don’t think we’re quite there with the t-shirts yet) and wellies and winter boots for casual footwear – hallelujah!

However with spring comes a rather more pressing matter…spring cleaning… Afraid so people, time to roll up those sleeves and get your houses and places of work in tip top shape for a fresher summer! It may all feel extremely daunting, however with the right attitude, and your ‘Mary Poppins’ heads on, you may just find that element of fun!…maybe…

Here at Office 365 we have a surprisingly large selection of cleaning equipment and an even wider choice of cleaning products to choose from! With all the top named brands, and the latest quality products, you can be sure of a sparkle and a gleam that even your mother-in-law would be impressed by!

Browse through categories such as bin bags & liners, brooms & brushes, buckets & wringers, cloths, draining racks, general equipment, general products, kitchen & bathroom, mops, paper rolls, soap & hand, trolleys, vacuum cleaners and vinyl gloves!

Please don’t mistake our ‘spring clean’ attitude for one that suggests you do not regularly clean your home! There will always be those tasks that need to be done on a more regular basis. In the workplace cleaners are employed to dust, wash and vacuum the premises every single day of the working week! In the home it works differently because of the hours we work. Generally we can expect to wash dishes and kitchen surfaces every day, vacuum and sweep the floors every day to every other day together with the clothes wash cycles, and dust, change bedding and clean the bathroom once a week. All in all, a great deal of supplies are required in order to maintain standards whether for the home or the workplace!

If you have any questions about any of our products or services, please feel free to call a member of our staff who can help you with bulk buy quotations and stock availability – 0870 766 1624.

When running a successful establishment you must ensure that your facilities are up to standard. An often overlooked area within the premises is the bathroom. With often hundreds of people using the same washroom, provisions should to be implemented to ensure that standards are maintained. Besides the obvious employee dissatisfaction, visitors and potential clients impressions of your business must also be considered!

A badly equipped and dirty bathroom will be a major point of complaint from your staff and depending on how many employees you have, it will be a complaint you hear consistently throughout the day! Providing inadequate facilities demonstrates your lack of regard for your team and certainly does not leave an impression of success.

Let’s change the scenario, imagine inviting potential new customers to your place of work, for a demonstration maybe, a meeting. They go to use your washroom and are knocked back by the horrendous smell! Holding their breath, they make it to the toilet, which is filthy and where on earth is the toilet paper. One disaster to another, the soap dispensers are empty and there are no paper towels to dry your hands with. Aside from it being a traumatic experience, your potential customer will no doubt be put of your company and will have no confidence in your professionalism and organisation.

What you need to aim for is sophistication; perfection from every angle. A well run, smooth operation, clean furniture, flooring, excellent light for working conditions, good food and beverage facilities and well equipped bathrooms; your customers and clients want to be impressed! Wow them!

Here at Office 365 we have a fabulous range of janitorial supplies which will equip you bathroom with everything you could possibly desire. Your can order in bulk to ensure your supplies do not run thin and we’ll even offer you a reduction in price! This said, our prices are already the cheapest on the UK online stationery and office supply market – we’re so confident of this, we offer a price match guarantee!

You’ll find a fantastic assortment of Air Fresheners so that you can ensure a fresh smelling bathroom at all times, paper towels, soaps and creams and even a great choice of different bathroom dispensers! Browse our selection and simply add your required items to your cart! Ordering couldn’t be simpler! However if you have any question for our team or would like some help, then please feel free to call on 0870 766 1624!

At Office 365 we pride ourselves on our many services we offer making the complete ordering process easy, fast and stress free with us. We have a huge variety of stationery and office supplies available to both businesses and individuals alike with products such as office electronics and their consumables, furniture, desktop accessories, stationery as well as cleaning and catering supplies. We offer a price match guarantee which means if you find any of our products elsewhere for cheaper, we will match that price! Many of our customers are schools, NHS trusts, GP’s, government departments and locals government organisations, and we understand that when ordering for a company such as this, different procedures must be complied with, which is why we allow for purchase orders to be faxed over where necessary!

Many of our customers find that we offer an unbeatable service in terms of delivery and price and so prefer to order their item in bulk so that it lasts the entire office for a year. We take great pleasure in offering a bulk order service where we are able to give you a quote where products are ordered in larger volumes. Here you can either add the item to your basket and then select ‘get a quote’, or you can call our team on 0870 766 1624 where a member of our team will be more than happy to help.

We offer the secure Mastercard Worldwide payment service which is unbeatable in terms of security and peace of mind and accepts cards such as Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Maestro, American Express and Solo. However if you prefer, we even offer the ability to pay via PayPal now! We prefer you to place orders online, however if for whatever reason you need to speak to our team, our lines are open from 9:30am to 5:30pm Monday to Friday, or alternatively you can contact us via our email address info@office365.co.uk where we will also be able to help you.

If you order before 4pm, thanks to our dedicated ordering process, you will receive your items for next day delivery! The process is carried out in a fully automated pick and pack warehouse to ensure that we can deliver your most popular items within 24 hours, however if your item is urgent, we do suggest that you call to check stock!

Finally, we pride ourselves on being an environmentally aware company and offer our customers a great variety of Green Products which are recycled and recyclable! We also offer a variety of Breast Cancer Awareness products which when purchased donates money directly to Breast Cancer research! Our entire order process has been designed to have as minimal affect as possible on the environment from efficient logistics and packaging solutions to electronic invoicing to our ability to source the best environmentally friendly products for our customers. You will find that our Blog features various environmentally friendly articles offering advice on our green products and how your office can be green. However if you can help us be more eco friendly, we’d love to hear from you, so please do get in touch!

Influenza, Flu, the lurgy, whatever you want to call this blasted virus, it’s here and it’s not taking any prisoners! We’ve all (including myself) been harping on about the Norovirus and its new strains causing havoc in our hospitals, and all the while flu this winter 2012/13 has really taken a hold. It has most certainly been an eventful year so far for us in terms of health, with my youngest battling a severe case of the chicken pox over Christmas, followed shortly by the Norovirus which was followed in less than a week by the flu. My partner and I were next, struck even worse by the flu than she was; bed bound and hopeless. Last week was an utter nightmare, the shivers, body aches so bad you couldn’t sleep or lye still, hot, then cold, temperatures, delirium, and how you’re meant to keep a house running whilst getting children to school and back and cooking meals I’ll never know, it was a complete disaster! Never the less, after a weekend spent catching up on chores and getting out for some much needed fresh air, we’re all now back to work and school, albeit with colds!

Do not be distracted by the other pandemics hitting us this winter, we must be wise to them all and make sure that we are defending ourselves against them all. As the soon as the Norovirus had visited us, we let our guards down, relieved thinking we’d be ok now; we couldn’t have been more wrong! If you’re immune systems are already weakened, you will stand more chance of catching the next thing out there. The flu should be taken seriously in all cases. Yes, most people will recover in a week or two; however, it can cause serious illness and death, especially where the very young and the elderly are concerned.

Thanks to a sharp increase in the number of flu cases and fear of a pandemic, a campaign was recently launched to encourage the public to adopt good respiratory and hand hygiene practices. The slogan ‘Catch it. Bin it. Kill it.’ you may recognise from previous years, and certainly following this advice, you can ensure that you are doing your bit to prevent the spread. We are advised to carry tissues wherever we go and to use them to catch coughs or sneezes and then to bin the tissues and to kill the germs by washing our hands immediately after. Adopting these good practises will in turn help to prevent the spread of the Norovirus too.

Encourage good hygiene in your workplace by providing boxes of tissues at every desk, hand sanitizer and hand wash in all bathroom facilities. You will find all the sanitary products you need for the home or the office at Office 365, however if you’d like some help with sourcing the correct items, we’re always on hand to help, simply call us on 0870 766 1624.

The latest figures suggest that more than 150,000 people were taken ill with the winter vomiting bug during the festive period this year. In fact, these cases were reported in just the last two weeks of 2012 where the Health Protection Agency confirmed 529 cases of Norovirus and they estimate that for every reported case, 288 are not flagged up. The Health Protection Agency suggest that up to 1.19 million people could have contracted the illness this season which is a massive 63% rise on the previous season. Experts have advised that this is due to the new strain of the virus, Sydney 2012. Where a new strain is reported, that season will always experience greater numbers of infected people.

The more we hear about this virus, the more we worry ourselves here at Office 365. We’re a small team and would be affected badly should the virus sweep through our offices! Many businesses alike are also concerned with reports that the bug has swept the country and has led to the closure of dozens of hospital wards! In fact over the last two weeks, 33 hospital outbreaks have been reported; how many business outbreaks have there been I wonder?

In 2009 when I was first aware of the virus, my daughter contracted the New Orleans 2009 strain. She had never been so ill in her life, nor has she been since (touch wood). The virus attacked her stomach causing nausea, sickness, diarrhoea, and later affected her focus where she could no longer hold a conversation and her eyes lolled back in her head. She turned grey and became incontinent in every sense. It was utterly hideous and very scary indeed! During the time, my other daughter and I used hand sanitizer ALL the time. I constantly cleaned the door handles and left windows open. Every surface my ill daughter came into contact with I cleaned. I ensured my daughters were kept apart and when I was dealing with my sick child, I was careful not to breathe too closely! Then of course I’d wash my hands afterwards. It was a constant 4-5 days of boil washing bedding and pyjamas, cleaning hands and surfaces and keeping up fluids. It was relentless! Never the less, it came to an end and thanks to the strict regime, neither myself nor my other daughter caught the bug!

Our advice to you as individuals and businesses alike is to ensure that you have a good supply of hand soap available in washroom/bathroom facilities and to provide hand sanitizer at each area of the office. Encourage staff to wash their hands, to sanitize them. Ask them each to clean their desk surface areas at the beginning of each day and not to prepare their lunches on surfaces until they have been wiped down first. Consistently encourage cleanliness and should any staff members appear to be showing signs of the winter bug, send them home! We have a great range of sanitation products and cleaning products here at Office 365, we advise you get stocked up!

For further information or advice, please feel free to contact us on 0870 766 1624.

The longer your cleaner is working, the longer you’ll need to pay them, of course! Whether you have a few floors in an office block, or just a few rooms, you’ll need to employ a cleaner to maintain the basic hygiene in your work premises. This works well for both your firm and the economy whilst you provide employment for various different areas of expertise. Although we’d never want this job to be eradicated completely, we can suggest ways were you will not have to find so many hours work for your cleaner, saving you a pretty penny and enabling them to get home to their families in better time!

As it stands, many cleaners find themselves wandering the many rooms and corridors of your offices with their products in their hands. There is only so much you can carry, and so this will inevitably mean running back and forth between the janitorial supplies cupboard and the rooms that need cleaning. However there is an easier solution.

Providing your cleaner with a janitorial trolley will mean that they are better equipped to cope with their line of work. Using a trolley means that everything they need to go about their daily routine can be found on the trolley enabling your cleaner to spend their precious time doing what you have employed them to do; clean. A favourite option among our customers in the Numatic VersaClean Janitors Trolley featured below.

• The janitorial trolley has 100mm heavy-duty castors and rotating corner protectors
• 4x 5 litre top pails (2x 10 litre pails optional) with universal dual waste system providing a choice of either single 230 litre or twin 70 litre waste disposal
• 22 litre mopping kit (BK2) for clean and dirty water buckets
• Highly efficient Allmops press incorporated with the unique mop absorber feature
• Just £253.14 inc VAT

For one initial larger payment, you can save your selves many hours of pay and time wastage. You can provide better quality tools for your cleaner making their jobs easier and more manageable. Using a janitor’s trolley means that everyone’s happy, an investment certainly worth making! However if you find this stretches the budget a little too much, we also have a version by the same makers, slightly smaller, and slightly cheaper too! The Numatic Xtra-Compact XC-1 Cleaning Trolley is on for just £148.48 inc VAT! With plenty of janitorial trolleys to choose from here at Office 365, there will be an option to suit every pocket.

It’s the time of year again where, with the big season change, drop in temperature, and pick up in wind, that many of us with suffer the dreaded ‘lurgy’ as I have myself. Luckily working my full time hours from home, I can keep my virus to myself (and my family), however had I worked in the office, I would have only been able to take the worst days off work sick and then been forced to come into the office, still contagious, ready to contaminate the whole place and everyone in it!

Offices have shared facilities such as bathrooms, canteens, vending machines and photocopiers, and much of the time we will for a moment, use each other’s phones and computers too. While carrying a virus and the germs that go with it, this is the fastest way to spread it, plus with the addition of air conditioning, your poor colleagues don’t stand a chance!

There are various ways you can help; provide tissues and hand sanitsier at every desk, then ensure that there are plenty of advise posters encouraging your staff to Catch-it, Bin-it, Kill it. Ensure your washroom facilities are kept stocked up with soap and that your employees take time off sick when ‘in the thick of it’. Finally keep surfaces and items free from the spread of these germs by cleaning them after contact!

Our Robinson Young antibacterial wipes have been drenched in a high specification bactericide which is active against Salmonella, Listeria and all other gram-positive and negative bacteria as well as a whole range of different viruses and fungi! Conveniently kept at each area of the office, you can advise your staff to, when ill, ensure all surfaces, keyboards, telephones and so on, have been given a quick wipe at various intervals throughout the day!

Our Robinson Young Caterpack Antibacterial Disinfectant Wipes featured are the ideal surface cleaner in the office, the home and in the catering industry!

• Caterpack Disinfectant Wipes
• Economical wipes for keeping surfaces clean and germ-free
• Disposable, quality cloths in a dispensing tub
• 500 wipes
• Just £45.10 INC VAT!

The Green Bit

Robinson Young Limited recognise that to a greater or lesser extent, every organisation has some impact upon the environment, and so are committed to a policy of continuous improvement in the way in which they manage their environmental responsibilities. Central to their policy are the following objectives:

• Monitor the effects of their directly-controlled activities and seek to minimise any adverse impact upon the environment.
• Minimise waste and ensure that there is effective control, which promotes recycling where possible and provides responsible disposal, particularly with regard to hazardous wastes.
• Promote environmentally responsible policies in all its commercial activities, including purchasing and investment.
• Work closely with customers and suppliers, so that environmental awareness is extended throughout the supply chain.
• Use energy supplies efficiently and to reduce the impact of their transport operations by the use of shared loads and backhauling distribution systems.
• To encourage their employees to consider environmental responsibilities and to integrate these considerations into relevant business operations.
• Comply with current legislation, and beyond this to adopt a best-practice approach to their environmental management policies.

With the change in seasons approaching we need to be prepared for colds that are sure to come with it. It’s not all that surprising to expect illness, we’ve grown accustomed to expect it during the transition from summer to autumn, in fact it is now the first few weeks of September and I am writing this with the sniffles myself. We need to be much more careful during the change of seasons than during those cold winter nights, as unprepared, we become chilled much more quickly. Our bodies are still attuned to the warmth of sunny summer days and the majority will want to keep wearing their warm season wardrobe in some kind of protest or denial of the end of summer.

Face facts; it’s over. The sun has gone and the rain is here, the temperatures have dropped and the wind has picked up. Without warm clothing and coats to protect us from these elements, we will inevitably become ill. Employers can expect to see a drop in attendance over the coming weeks and so work productivity is sure to diminish, along with the mood in the office!

Firstly, prepare. Make sure that you provide warmth, whether that be in the form of central heating, or you provide individual heater for warming areas of the office. This warmth can protect your staff from becoming ill whilst at work, but can also boost the mood in the office. Warm employees are happy ones, as are well employees! Office 365 has an extensive selection of heaters so that you can choose one which specifically meets your individual requirements.

We need to prepare for what is ultimately inevitable. Your staff will catch colds and you will need to do your upmost to prevent the spread of illness among your staff and of course yourself. Provide hand sanitizer. In your bathrooms you will find soap, however you will need something which can be used whilst in the office and on the go. Providing a bottle of hand sanitizer in each area of your office will encourage its use. If you see and employee who appears under the weather – so to speak – encourage them to use the sanitizer so that they do not spread infection. Alternatively make sure that all staff use it upon arrival into work in the morning and following lunch and tea breaks.

Finally tissues; catch it, bin it, kill it. The fastest way to prevent the spread of flu is to prevent the spread of germs. Provide tissues and of course bins and actively encourage your staff to use them! Using these tips will ultimately create a better environment for work and a happier office full of staff; note the use of the word, full!

It’s time for your 2^nd instalment of Office Games, dedicated to your work life satisfaction, 9 to 5 enjoyment and Monday to Friday employer frustration! We know what it’s like to be stuck behind a desk on these, “ahem”, ‘sunny’ afternoons when it seems everyone else is enjoying the, errm, ‘warmer weather’. We feel it as strongly as you do, the urge to move, stretch your legs, steer your eyes away from the computer screen. So we thought, between you and us, we could come up with some little games you could play that will keep work satisfaction at a high and keep you in your chair at the same time! The boss can’t say fairer than that?! If you get caught, you have one of two options; 1) DON’T BLAME US, or 2) explain that thanks to this new past time, you’re finding yourself enjoying coming into work and therefore expelling a more pleasant tone with the customers? It’s got to be worth a try right?

So today we’d like to introduce you to Office Games 2 – Office Basketball! Some of you may have tried this one before and may have even used a similar idea in your bedroom as a child. Now that you’re an adult, it doesn’t mean to say that you have to behave like one…well, not at all times any way! So rediscover your inner child and gather together the essentials for this fantastic office sport! It’s so simple I’d be concerned if you hadn’t already thought of it! All you need are plastic waste paper bins, one will do, and an area big enough to position it away from you.

Step one – Place the bin at least 3 meters away from you; the better aim you are, the further away you should place it. Remember, this is an office – other people may be using it, so try not to cause a tripping hazard! It would be fair to say that if you boss were to trip on your badly placed ‘basket ball hoop’, it would be game over!

Step two – Using either waste paper, empty ink cartridges, food packaging, sticky tack balls, your colleagues snacks (while they’re backs turned) or any other form of lightweight, throw-able object, get into position, take aim, and throw your rubbish (packaging, Blu-Tack, snacks) into your strategically placed bin.

Step three – If you score, stand – do a ceremonious little victory dance, be seated again and take your next call. If you miss, hang your head in shame, you’re rubbish, where were ya? Try again and if you fail again, well, don’t give up your day job!

To add a little more realism to your game, you can normally find the miniature basket ball nets that can be hung above your bin in various places online and high street retailers. It’s not essential however, and often the net’s too small for the object you’d like to throw, plus, it kinda gives the game away which isn’t ideal if your boss is a bit of a stig in the mud! For a wide choice of waste paper bins however, look no further than Office 365, the Don of all online stationery retailers!