How Mall Housekeeping Scenario Will Change Post COVID-19

How Mall Housekeeping Will Change Post COVID-19

2 june

Tags: housekeeping services

In the coming months, every mall's housekeeping staff is going to play a significant role in minimising the risk of infection and keeping their customers and employees safe. The mall will be required to take drastic measures to ensure that the housekeeping staff is functioning to its full potential.

As the mall manager, you need to proactively ensure that the proper sanitation of the mall is maintained. Smartly reassess the housekeeping staff’s plan of action and establish a more robust standard operating procedure to tackle the tough situation. The SOP is developed to ensure that all employees and customers are safe from COVID-19 even when the lockdown is withdrawn and malls start functioning regularly. Hence, the SOP must contain the following.

1. Revamped Cleaning Strategy

One of the most important aspects of maintaining health standards is cleaning thoroughly. Although malls can be the potential hotspots for infection, they are still the best place to open up shops. Malls have a controlled environment with strict health and hygiene protocols that most standalone shops will fail to do. Thus, the housekeeping service providers should clean and disinfect the entire mall from time to time. They should only use disinfectants approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) or those that comply with the US FDA guidelines or ICMR guidelines.

The most frequently touched surfaces like the lift doors and buttons, door handles, escalator handrails, and water dispensers need to be cleaned on an hourly basis. Place particular emphasis on high-traffic zones like the mall entrances, frisking booths, reception desks, waiting areas, gaming zones, food court, theatre, and washrooms. Every element in these places should be cleaned and disinfected multiple times a day to minimise the risk of contamination. Lastly, the smoking zones should be completely shut as they are closed spaces with a lot of passive inhalation happening.

For washrooms, self-sanitising seat covers need to be installed for added safety. All kinds of people will use these public toilets, and it is impossible to identify and prevent anyone who's unwell from using the toilets. It is better to take safety precautions and provide a sanitised toilet for every user. Another practical thing to do is replace the manual taps with sensor-based ones. This way even the smallest chance of any contamination by touching can be avoided.

The housekeeping staff should place automatic sensor-based sanitising machines or pedal push machines throughout the mall, and especially outside the washrooms so that customers can sanitise their hands after touching the door handles. Apart from washrooms, these sanitising solutions should be placed at high-traffic locations like the entrance, reception area, lifts, parking entry and exit points, and billing desks.

2. Sanitised Entertainment Spots

A lot of malls have entertainment options like movie theatres, gaming zones, special entertainment options like paintball, trampoline park, snow world, bowling arena, etc. If your mall has any of these, pay close attention to sanitisation here.

For theatres, try not allocating all the seats to people. You can leave alternate seats empty between people to avoid any unintentional contact. Just like other entry points in the mall and its stores, maintain a systematic entryway for theatres too. We suggest discontinuing physical tickets for a while and switching to scanning tickets using QR codes. You can do the same for every entertainment option that requires tickets.

Another vector of infection in the mall can be the food court. Here, the food must only be served in takeaway containers that are one-time use only. The dining tables must be cleared and cleaned before and after someone uses them. This is a place where the housekeeping service providers need to be extra vigilant as there is a high chance of infection.

3. Complete Protection Guidelines

Merely cleaning the surfaces is not enough. You have to take other precautions to minimise the spread of the virus. To begin with, security checks at the main entrance should include temperature checks for anyone who enters the facility. Once they clear the security round, make it mandatory for every person to use hand sanitisers before entering the mall. Make sure that the housekeeping staff keeps sanitiser bottles filled at all times. The entire security check should be contactless. This might affect frisking and make it a time-consuming task, but it is necessary.

The security staff must check that the Arogya Setu app is installed on the visitors’ phones and that the bluetooth is turned on. This way the staff will know that all the visitors are safe and restrict anyone who is found positive on the app.

Additionally, anyone entering the mall must be wearing face masks. Ask the security team to prohibit entries of people without masks. The employees from all departments should also be wearing face masks all the time. The housekeeping staff should be wearing PPE kits that include face masks, gloves, and shoe covers.

4. Additional Preparedness

Have the housekeeping staff place markings on the floor to indicate the distance customers must maintain from each other. This should be done outside the main entrance, at the food court outlets, outside every store and showroom, and even inside every individual store.