TAG | HR
Hand Hygiene Compliance: The Workplace Environment
We continue our posts regarding the psychological aspects of the H1N1 flu by examining environmental aspects that can facilitate one of the best preventive measures – hand-washing.
#1 Easy Access; If it’s there, it’s used.
If companies want their employees to wash their hands more frequently, then they should ensure that sanitizers are easily available and that the washroom facilities are clean and well-stocked. Psychologists know that when barriers to entry for a desired behaviour are reduced, participation in that behaviour increases.
All forms of behaviour can be applied to this simple yet often underestimated phenomenon. Human behaviours are easily influenced by the availability or lack thereof of products. Most obviously, commodity providers make use of this principle to readily promote consumption. Rather problematic illustrations of this principle are replete in the literature on drug and alcohol consumption. For example, when access to beer and alcohol, either through lower price or increased store hours, is made easier, people buy more alcohol. When snack food is placed close at-hand either on the desk or close by, workers eat more. Conversely, when people have to get out of their chairs to walk to the food, less consumption occurs.
In theory, most people would use sanitizer, but rather than make people question whether a detour of several feet is worth the trouble, place the sanitizer on a stand in the middle of corridor or just after the door. Easy access promotes consumption, and making sanitizer readily available acts as constant reminder. I recently ran across a study in the American Journal of Infection Control, 2008, authored by an enterprising nurse-manager who borrowed an idea she saw in a mall –a large stainless steel tripod with automatic gel dispensers was placed outside the children’s play area with eye-catching publicity on each side. The manager modified the advertizing messages and placed the same impossible-to-miss hand hygiene dispenser mid-corridor resulting in dramatic improvements in hand sanitizing for hospital staff and visitors.
