Swipe Right for Staph: The Untouched Truth About Office Electronics

Even when adults do wash their hands after using the bathroom, most people don’t clean or sanitize their phones every single time. Cell phones can easily re-contaminate hands, and then hands will go on to contaminate laptops, doorknobs, light switches, hand railings and other high-touch surfaces. We recently conducted a research study to determine how much bacteria were on the electronic devices of 60 office workers. We found that on average, laptops contained 2,223 bacteria and cell phones and handheld devices contained 2,241 bacteria, which is 10X more than a toilet seat³.

Most electronics aren't regularly cleaned or sanitized

As cleaning professionals know, when cleaning and disinfecting office spaces, electronics like computers, laptops, and phones are not touched. Electronics are sensitive and expensive equipment, and using the wrong cleaning product may damage them. In fact, most professional cleaning contracts specifically state that electronics will not be cleaned by janitorial staff. But even if electronics were in the contracts, there are challenges with the way modern office workers operate. With 80% of employees now operating on a hybrid or fully remote model with only partial in-office work, employees tend to take their devices home with them, which means our laptops are not even present when cleaning occurs at the end of the day. This leaves it up to the employees to sanitize and clean their laptops and other electronics. But do they actually do this? We surveyed adults working in a hybrid office about their device cleaning habits. 52% said they had not sanitized their devices within the last month and 7% had never sanitized their device3. Based on these survey results, it is not surprising that 25% of the devices in our study tested positive for Staphylococcus bacteria³.

You don’t need to clean electronics yourself to make it a value-added service: offer sanitizing electronic wipes to building occupants

As a professional cleaner or cleaning contractor, you could include electronics cleaning and sanitizing to your contract to provide a value-added service, but it isn’t the only way, especially if you do not want to take the risk of any potential damage to computers and other electronics. Most electronics wipes do not kill germs. But for facilities that are concerned about the spread of germs from contaminated laptops (remember, in our study, laptops were 10X more contaminated than a toilet seat³!) offering sanitizing electronics wipes may be the key. People may be more likely to sanitize their electronics if they have access to sanitizing wipes in their office, and this can be a win-win for your cleaning contracts as well as the building occupants.