You and your employees are the engine that runs your business. If the people at work aren't healthy, then they simply cannot be as productive as they would be otherwise. In recent decades, Sick Building Syndrome is a hot topic. The strong interest arises in part from the fact that it is estimated that it costs business billions of dollars in terms of lost productivity. You don't have to have Sick Building Syndrome per se to see reduced productivity at the office. A business that desires financial success should strive to keep things clean, if only to prevent completely avoidable losses in productivity.

Timely trash removal
This may seem very nitpicking, but it should be viewed as an essential foundation of keeping the office adequately clean for human habitation and good productivity. This is especially true in cases where people sometimes eat at their desk and put food wrappers or even discarded food in their desk trash can. If the trash in the office is limited to throwing out botched letters and envelopes, there is more flexibility on time. One of the reasons to make sure that trash is taken out at least daily is because leftover food items in the trash can attract vermin. This goes well beyond the fact that the trash itself can be a health hazard. Vermin not only carry disease, they can do a lot of damage to office supplies.

Carpet cleaning
Indoor carpeting can be dirtier than the roads you drive on. Even with doormats at every entrance, people track all kinds of dirt and crud into the office on the bottoms of their shoes. Hiring professional carpet cleaners -- or renting the proper equipment to do it yourself -- is essential to keeping the office healthy and productive. Remember, this is something that should be done after hours, when normal employees are not around, and with proper ventilation. It involves serious chemicals that can be harmful to the health of employees if proper precautions are not taken.

Use of proper protective equipment
Your janitorial staff or other employees engaged in any kind of sanitation work should be properly supplied with protective equipment, such as rubber gloves and a dust mask. This is not just to protect their health. It is also to ensure that the germs they remove in the process of doing their job do not inadvertently come back.

Clean bathrooms and bathroom entrances
This should be done at least daily. In a large office with a lot of employees, it is appropriate to have janitorial staff service the bathroom more than once a day. Ideally, the bathrooms should be designed to minimize the spread of germs from one person to another. For example, for a large bathroom with a lot of traffic, it is best to have a privacy corridor designed as part of the entrance so no door is needed. If the bathroom does have a door, in order to reduce the spread of germs, the cleaning crew needs to clean the door handles frequently.

Disposal of old papers
Sometimes, office supplies sit around for weeks, months or even years, gathering dust and taking up space. If you have a stack of old paper forms that has been sitting there long enough, it is never going to get used. Even if you wanted to use them, if it has sat there long enough, it is probably not only covered in dust, it is likely also bent out of shape in some way. This is not adding any value. In fact, it is probably causing everyone respiratory problems. Make sure you get rid of old papers before they make people sick.

In business, everyone knows that time is money. Cleanliness is also money, yet no one seems to make that connection. If you want to succeed, make sure you stay clean.