High-touch surfaces in the workplace: which to clean, and how often

The high-touch surfaces that need cleaning most often in an office are the shared ones that many people touch in a short time: entry doors, elevator buttons, restroom fixtures, break room handles, shared printers, and conference room tables. Personal desks matter less than people think, because one person touches them.

Below is a list by area with nightly and daytime frequencies, the clean-then-disinfect order, how contact time works, what staff can do between visits, and the touchpoints most lists leave out.

High-touch surfaces by area, and how often

Every surface below is cleaned and disinfected each service night. The daytime column is for busy offices, usually covered by a day porter on a set route.

Use the daytime column where traffic is heavy. A twenty-person office may need no daytime passes at all. A multi-tenant lobby with hundreds of visitors a day needs them.

The touchpoints most lists miss

Every published list names door handles, light switches, and keyboards. Those are rarely the ones skipped. The misses are the surfaces that are not in a room anyone thinks of as a room, or that nobody owns.

Walk the path a person takes from the parking lot to their desk and back, and count what they touch. In most buildings it includes several of these:

• Badge readers and keypad entry panels.
• Exit door push bars and the inside handle of the stairwell door.
• Elevator hall call buttons on every floor, not just the lobby.
• The underside of stair rails, where hands actually grip.
• Water bottle filler buttons and the paper towel lever in the break room.
• Thermostats and shared light panels.
• Shared tablets for room booking, visitor sign-in, or kiosks.
• Mailroom lockers and package shelves.
• Pens at reception and in conference rooms.
• Trash and recycling lids that open by hand.

Add the ones that apply to your building to the nightly scope by name. A line that says "disinfect touchpoints" gets the ten obvious surfaces. A line that lists the badge reader by the side door gets the badge reader.

Then set frequency by touch count, not by room. The exit push bar by the parking lot may need a daytime pass. The conference room on the top floor that is booked twice a week does not.

Clean first, then disinfect

Disinfectant works on a clean surface. Skin oil, food residue, and dust shield germs from the product, so the order is always clean, then disinfect.

1. Clean. Wipe the surface with a cleaner and a fresh cloth to remove visible soil.
2. Disinfect. Apply an EPA-registered disinfectant used per its label.
3. Wait. Leave the surface wet for the full contact time on the label.
4. Wipe or air dry, as the label directs. Food-contact surfaces in the break room may need a rinse.

Cloths matter too. A cloth carried from a toilet to a door handle moves the problem around. Many crews color-code cloths by area and change them often. We use EPA-registered disinfectants per the label on every touchpoint program.

Contact time: the step that gets skipped

Contact time, sometimes called dwell time, is how long a disinfectant must stay wet on a surface to do what its label says. It is printed on the label and varies by product. Some list about a minute; many list several minutes; some list ten.

This is where most touchpoint cleaning falls short. Spraying a door handle and wiping it dry right away cleans it but does not disinfect it. On a nightly route with hundreds of touchpoints, a crew has to work in a pattern that lets surfaces sit wet: apply to a group of surfaces, move on, and come back to wipe.

Ask any vendor which product they use, what its contact time is, and how their route allows for it. If the answer is a product name and no number, ask again. We offer electrostatic spraying, which coats many surfaces at once, on request. It does not replace cleaning the touchpoints first.

What staff can do between visits

The night crew resets the building. What happens between 9 a.m. and the next night depends partly on the people working in it.

• Wipe your own desk, keyboard, mouse, phone, and headset. One person touches them; that person is best placed to clean them.
• Put wipes where people work. Shared printers, conference rooms, and the break room. Use wipes approved for the surfaces and electronics there.
• Never spray electronics directly. Apply to a cloth or use a wipe, following the device maker's guidance.
• Clear desks at night if you want the crew to wipe them.
• Decide who restocks wipes and hand sanitizer. If it is the cleaning contractor, put it in the scope with a par level.

Keep the staff part short and voluntary. The aim is to cover personal items so the crew and porter can focus on shared surfaces.

How to check that touchpoints are being done

A clean door handle and an untouched one look the same, which makes touchpoints the hardest part of a scope to inspect by eye. Three checks work without special training:

• The marker test. Put a small, nearly invisible mark on ten touchpoints in the evening: a fluorescent marker dot that shows under a cheap UV flashlight works well. Check the next morning. A dot still there was not wiped. Rotate the surfaces each time and do not announce which.
• The early walk. Walk the route at opening, before staff arrive, and look at the surfaces that show residue: stainless elevator panels, glass push plates, the coffee machine buttons. Fingerprints at 7 a.m. mean the surface was skipped.
• The round log. If you have daytime porter passes, ask for a simple log by area with the time of each pass, and compare it with when complaints come in.

Share what you find with the account manager instead of raising it with the crew directly. Supervisor inspections should be checking the same list, and your results tell you whether theirs match.

When to step up the frequency

Touchpoint frequency should change with conditions. Step up during flu season, after a reported illness in the office, before and after a large event, or when headcount on a floor jumps. Add daytime passes for one to two weeks, then step back down on a set date.

Our post on an office illness disinfection plan covers the first 24 hours after people start calling in sick. For where touchpoints sit in the full nightly scope, see the office cleaning checklist.

Build a touchpoint program for your building

We walk your building with you, list the touchpoints by name, mark the ones that need daytime passes, and quote nightly disinfection services with porter coverage where traffic calls for it. Supervisor inspections check the touchpoint list, and your account manager can step frequency up or down when conditions change. Book a free facility assessment or call (202) 968-1190.