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.

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!

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.

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 hard now to imagine the world when you were lucky to see a bar of soap in a public toilet! How we’ve advanced as hygienic human beings! Nowadays you’ll see that no matter where you go, there will be a soap dispenser in the bathroom, whether this is wall mounted or not. The disadvantage of soap bars in public toilets is that every person who washes their hands had to touch the soap and if they didn’t clean their hands thoroughly, then dirt and bacteria would remain and build up to a point where actually you infecting your hands rather than washing them! The other problem with soap bars is that councils, cafes and restaurants would have to spend an awful lot of money replacing these soap bars whenever they went missing!

Today we have evolved to a cleaner race, we can now wash our hands with soap from a dispenser, however now we ask ourselves; “is this enough?” For many, the answer was no and so with great anticipation the touch free soap dispenser was born! The touch free concept is dedicated to providing a more sanitary environment within bathroom environments. We’re all aware that cross contamination of bacteria within public toilets can be a serious health risk and so touch free soap dispensers option can only be beneficial.

However many people comment that the only reason they touch a soap dispenser is to put soap on their hands and then to clean them, so why should they buy a machine that will keep dirty hands from becoming more dirty prior to washing them clean anyway? It’s a fair point yes, however if your hands are particularly dirty, contaminated say, with meat, faeces, blood or such like, then you’re not going to want to touch the soap dispenser, nor will you want to touch a soap dispenser which you believe may have been touched by someone who has extremely harmful bacteria or general nastiness on their hands. It is an added reassurance which in many scenarios will also prove extremely useful!

Our Kimberley Clark Electronic Hand Cleanser Dispenser featured is a fantastic example of the most hygienic soap solution for your bathroom.

• Electric Hand Cleanser
• Most hygienic soap dispensing option
• Reliable, controlled dispensing
• Indicator lights for low product and low battery
• White finish suits a wide range of decors
• Suitable for image conscious washrooms
• Suitable for facilities where hygiene is at the upmost importance
• White
• WxDxH: 230 x 138 x 333mm
• Just £55.61!

Remember our prices are guaranteed by our Price Match Policy, so if you find these cheaper anywhere else, we’ll match the price! What’s more, if you’re looking at buying a quantity of these for your buildings bathroom facilities, then just give us a call for a quote – 0870 766 1624.