Posted By Ian Stone Our IT dept has complained to me about the state of some peples desks and keyboards and want me to implement a cleaning policy for all 900 staff for their desks, keyboards and phones. Has anyone else taken this on board and how do you mange it? Thanks Ian

Posted By Kevin Thompson You may want to consider whether there is in fact a Health and Safety issue here. Are you just doing someone elses dirty work (excuse the pun).

Posted By Dave Daniel Tell your IT department to sort it out themselves - It's NOT a safety issue! When in Rover Group we had "empowerment" which meant that if you were a senior manager with a company car and wanted a clean office, the vacuum cleaner was in the cupboard for you to use.........

Posted By Liam Nolan Hi, Has anyone looked at why the keyboards are dirty? If you have 900 KB's on site then you must be in an office environment. It may be that youre operators are not keeping reasonable hygiene standards (washing their hands). However, if he dirty keyboards are geting dirty over a long time, then it may not be atributed to lack of hygeine standards. Are you the Safety Manager/Officer/Advisor? If you are then I think the IT dept is just trying to pass the buck. If you are the Line Manager and not involved in a full time safety role, then you may have some input or responsibility as to the soloution. If it was only a couple of KB's I would say replace them as they are cheap enough (taking into consideration the time/cost of cleaning material, etc) however 900 would certianly add up. I think if you made the cleaning materials available to the operators and gave them some time to do the cleaning, you would find they would have no problem with cleaning it themselves. I would however avoid demanding that they do it, rather give them the stuff and let them work away themselves, I think most workplaces have it in their employment contracts that the employee is obliged to keep their workstation (be it a desk or a production area) in a tidy clean condition. I also don't think that running someone through a disiplanary procedure is the way to go - the old adage 'making a mountain out of a mole hill' comes to mind. (Unions getting involved over a thing like this could bring the company to a halt, and to be honest I would be on their side - in case you think I am Union bashing).