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Keeping Sneeze Guards When Your City Reopens
The COVID-19 pandemic is still a prevalent threat, even as states across the country continue to reopen. While increases in vaccinations and the continued use of social distancing measures are helping to contain the spread of disease, it is still necessary to exercise vigilance and due caution.
If your city has chosen to reopen, you may have noticed businesses around you respond in kind. However, you may have also noticed that many customer-facing establishments still have safety features, like sneeze guards and social distancing markers, in place. Equipment like this is still necessary because it protects the health of workers.
Protecting Workers Should be a Priority
Consumers have a choice about where they go and how they might conduct errands. They may only need to visit a bank or grocery store for a few minutes at a time. The people who work at these locations do not have such a luxury. Employees of a business, especially customer-facing ones, have to see and assist many people over the course of a shift. High-traffic establishments like airports have hundreds of thousands of people pass through every day.
Sneeze guards and similar barriers are necessary to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. A sick workforce means that the local economy will halt to a standstill. As such, it is imperative to be considerate of the people who assist others.
As a business owner, it is always a good idea to invest in your employees’ health and safety. While observing reopening practices in your municipality, think about the options at your disposal when it comes to reducing COVID-19 spread. Many plastic fabricators offer sneeze guards and protective barrier services. Installing such equipment can increase the likelihood of conducting a safe reopening.
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A Primer on Sneeze Guards
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, companies and their workers stand on the frontline in upholding public health and safety. Therefore, it makes sense to invest in equipment that allows employees to do their jobs while minimizing the risk of exposure to harmful viruses and bacteria.
Acrylic sneeze guards are among the most effective products in combating COVID-19 spread. They are a physical barrier that can block respiratory droplets. If you need to outfit your business or office with sneeze guards, here are some factors to consider.
Key Sneeze Guard Characteristics
Acrylic sneeze guards are clear and durable, providing an uninterrupted line of sight between people. They are ideal for environments where people need to be relatively close to each other, such as schools, office environments, and customer-facing businesses.
While it is possible to make barriers out of other materials like polycarbonate and glass, acrylic stands out because it is inexpensive to manufacture and easy to work with–which means barriers can be deployed quickly.
Sneeze guards can be made with different thicknesses, from 1/8″ to 1″. Most environments can use a thin acrylic. A thinner sneeze guard also means it will be easier to move around as needed.
Your plastic manufacturer may offer many designs and configurations for your acrylic sneeze guard. For instance, you may want to opt for a wraparound design so that the guard serves as a tabletop divider. Full-body panels are recommended for standing areas. Many guards can also include pass-through windows for the exchange of documents, money, and writing utensils.
By enforcing multiple safety measures in your work environment, including a combination of sneeze guards, social distancing, and masks, you are doing your part in keeping your workers and customers safe. Contact your local sneeze guard distributor to learn about your options.
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Using Sneeze Guards to Protect Employees in Your Restaurant
To prevent the transmission of infectious diseases inside restaurants, there are several measures that managers need to take. Regularly sanitizing all surface areas is one of the most important. Correctly installing the appropriately sized sneeze guards, though, is another effective solution.
These clear acrylic guards help to protect employees and customers from harmful, airborne microbes. Their applications include self-service bars, cashier stations, and booth barriers, among others. By using sneeze guards, you help to impede the flow of viruses and bacteria in close indoor spaces.
Federal and local guidelines are in place that dictate the mandatory height, thickness, visibility, construction, and other considerations, so before you order your sneeze guards, make sure you check the regulations that apply to your business.
At Plastic Welding and Fabrication, LTD, we produce custom sneeze guards that meet your precise specifications. We work with high-quality, durable materials to provide cost-effective, long-lasting products. If you need assistance with sneeze guards, our team is here to take your call and answer your questions.
The effort to promote public health requires vigilance, caution, and the proper supplies. With our products, you can rest assured that you have a reliable solution that increases safety inside your restaurant.
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Choosing the Right Acrylic Sneeze Guards for Your Business
One of your primary tasks as a business owner is to maintain health measures to protect your employees and customers. Acrylic sneeze guards are an effective and affordable means of impeding the spread of airborne viruses. These clear barriers act as a shield against contaminants without obstructing the view.
By choosing the right sneeze guards, you can help to ensure that the people inside your business are safe. Here are some points to consider when you are ordering sneeze guards:
1. Guidelines – Local authorities may have implemented specific regulations regarding size, thickness, and material. Before ordering your sneeze guards, make sure your purchase keeps you in compliance.
2. Visibility – Visibility is one of the critical factors of sneeze guards. Scratched or tarnished products may be hurtful to the perception of your business, so if you already have sneeze guards, but they are looking worse for wear, you may want to consider a reorder.
3. Specifications – Be specific with the application of your acrylic sneeze guards (i.e., salad bar or buffet covering, etc.), your design requirements (including height and angle), and other physical product specs to ensure you receive precisely what you need.
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Sneeze Guards Are Essential Protection Against Airborne Viruses
When worries over airborne viruses abound, nothing can clear a room faster than a sneeze. From your own experience, you know how powerful a sneeze is. Science backs you up as a sneeze travels at 100 mph while carrying 100,000 droplets of moisture. This is a concern with COVID-19, as well as during the cold and flu season.
The question then arises, “How does a business protect its customers and employees when face-to-face services are necessary?” The answer is with an old favorite – sneeze guards. These protective devices have been around since the late 1950s. Their first use was to protect food at smorgasbords and ice cream parlors. But these same guards protect people with jobs that demand face-to-face contact.
Think of people in businesses, such as grocery stores, banks, pharmacies, and hotels. With a Plexiglass sneeze guard in place, the risk of infection from airborne viruses is reduced dramatically as this surface blocks viruses and germs. Such a measure is a small price to pay so companies can remain open while protecting people from illness and disease. These days, you’ll find sneeze guards providing safety barriers on school desks, around office cubicles, and at drive-through windows.
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How Acrylic Sneeze Guards Protect Your Customers
These days, a sneeze is more than just a sneeze. It’s a threat to other people’s health. A sneeze projects viruses and germs into the air and onto unsuspecting people nearby. Don’t expose your employees and customers to airborne illness. It’s affordable, convenient, and easy to protect your staff – as well as your customers – with acrylic sneeze guards.
Made of acrylic, plastic, or glass, these sneeze guards are too dense to allow airborne droplets to pass through. Thus, they serve as effective shields, stopping viruses from reaching someone in their path. You can install them on countertops, tables, desks, and food bars – anyplace you would like to safeguard the contents from viruses and germs.
First Used for Smorgasbords
The sneeze guard’s creation goes back many years to 1958 when restauranteur Johnny Garneau installed the first sneeze guard in Pennsylvania to protect food in a smorgasbord from contamination. The first ones were made of glass and used in restaurants, but you see them everywhere these days in any space where you want to protect people and food from germs. An acrylic sneeze guard is a cost-effective and practical way to look after people’s health and well-being.
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15 Best 2021 Business Goals to Set Now
- Increase Market Share
This bullet is customer driven. The concept is to increase the sales of your product to target consumers, thus, increasing overall market share for your product. (Investors will welcome this anytime they can).
For example, if you operate a Business-To-Business company, your overall goal should be to contact more company heads or HR departments. If you operate a smaller business that focuses on building computers, you’ll want more of the local population to come to your for your services. - Increase Community Outreach
No year in recent history has impacted smaller & locally owned businesses quite like 2020.
In September of 2020, Yelp released a projection that 60% of US businesses that closed due to COVID-19 won’t re-open.
Becoming a member of local chamber-of-commerce’s is a fantastic way to connect with other businesses in your area and ties directly into Goal #1.
Community outreach is an excellent goal for new or established organizations as new contacts are created and “word-of-mouth” marketing begins to spread. - Maintain Profits:
Stable finances are, by far, one of the most useful objectives you can have. By nature, a business cannot afford to stay in operation without steady income, or margins.
Maintaining profits (as opposed to increasing revenue) calls for a equilibrium between investments and profitability. Most business owners will agree that investments are necessary to test out changes in the market while expanding business. By establishing a balanced goal, you can figure how much money can go into growth strategies and new projects/equipment/marketing campaigns while still reaching a desired profit goal. - Reduce Energy/Decrease Tools Necessary for Operation
This bullet is a “dual-edged sword”. If you’re providing a product or service that requires being physically, cutting back on that energy to save money means you could potentially put that money to better use on things that are more useful and/or productive.
This step can be as minimal as cutting down on electricity or unplugging unused equipment on evenings and weekends. - Grow Shareholder Value
Positive changes in shareholder value is an extension of increasing profits for consumers of your publicly traded entity. Increasing the overall value of your company or organization can increase reputation, profits, or any other classification of “value”. The key aspect of this goal is to define what that value is and structure your key results, projects, and other prospects around this goal. - Increase Percentage of Sales Made With New Products/Product Features:
When any company introduces a new products, more times than not, research and development went into the “birth” or creation of that specific product or feature.
When brainstorming these new ideas, promoting them by means of marketing should be at the top of your priorities.
Allocating a little more money for marketing of a new item may be the difference between a successful launch or a product flop.
Remember, your overall goal for this bullet is to INCREASE the percentage of sales made and may require different approaches depending on your business structure and offered services. - Invest in a Quality Control Program
TQM, or Total Quality Management is a program that any company can adopt and is all about continuing to reduce errors made in manufacturing and streamlining a supply chain where physical products are sold.
It equally applies to both when handling with improving customer experiences and training staff. Generally speaking, improving quality across a wide array of areas is a great company level goal that’s easily align able since each team or department can be held accountable for their own work (and mistakes). - Focus on Leadership Skills for Key Team Members:
Training employees is one thing, Re-Training employees is a whole process of its own.
Making them comfortable so they can speak for themselves, or those under them and engaging creative, out-of-the-box style behavior is imperative.
If your business wants more feedback from lower levels, this is an important focus point to consider. - Balance Budget for X Period:
If you business if a non-profit organization, balancing a budget is a great top-level attribute to keep up with.
Likewise, this goal is great for teams or departments who may get a set amount to invest in campaigns or projects on a quarterly or annual basis. - Maintain, or if possible decrease debt.
Understandably across businesses as a whole, debt falls under finances. Maintaining a certain amount of financial debt is actually important…especially for businesses that are just getting started and may not have the profits to cover all debt costs. - Calculate and Create the Best Value of Product for Cost:
This is a better team goal for sales and marketing. The idea is to focus on selling customers that they are getting the best deal. Whether you’re selling something that is top of the line for higher cost or a cheap, low-cost alternative that doesn’t have the polish of a different brand. - Make Your Product More Reliable
Unless you have some dubious morality and ethics issues in your business and want to scam them, then making your product more reliable is an ideal way to gain new customers and repeat purchasers. - Cross-Sell to Long Term Customers
If you already have a loyal customer base, a good goal for 2021 is to sell them on more products. This also builds brand loyalty and ties into bullet 6. - Providing the Absolute Best Customer Service:
Let’s combine what we’ve learned from bullets 2,6,7,11,12 and 13. Offering the best customer service means that consumers are happier with the overall experience of buying or using your products & services. - Team Building/Diversity Training Goals:
This is a classic in HR teams. Team building and diversity training brings employee satisfaction to the spotlight to prevent turnover and allow positive environments where everyone is comfortable enough to share their ideas, whether they’re constructive or critical.
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Helping Students Understand Sneeze Guards
At one time, classrooms were crowded and busy places, but that’s not the case now. Social distancing, protective masks, and barriers are the norm. Some of the younger children may be uncertain about the purpose behind sneeze guards in the classroom, and that’s understandable. At Plastic Welding and Fabrication, LTD, we’re well versed with guards and are offering tips for understanding their purpose.
Students should be told about sneeze guards to let them know they’re not meant as a punishment that keeps students away from each other or their teachers. It’s imperative to stress that guards are installed for protection.
Rather than telling students how they work, it’s best to demonstrate how the sneeze guards work to stop the spread of germs. A simulated sneeze will do the trick. Here’s how you do that. Put some colored water in a mist spray bottle and squirt it at the guard. When the fine droplets strike the guard and don’t pass through, it delivers a practical lesson on how the guards work to make classrooms safe.
Of course, this will likely raise questions about the size of germs and the impermeability of materials, but what better place to ask and answer questions than in a classroom?
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How Plastic Sneeze Guards Work
They are not new. In fact, they’ve been part of our salad bar and dessert buffet experience for many years. But most of us never really gave plastic sneeze guards a second thought, until now. We know all about them at Plastic Welding and Fabrication LTD, and we’ll give you a crash course here.
The practice and execution are simple. It’s erecting an impermeable barrier that works to protect people or products on either side of the shield. A clear plastic sneeze guard does just as the name implies. It guards against the spread of germs that can be transmitted through a sneeze or cough. Initially, they were installed at buffet restaurants and cafeteria serving lines. They protected the food from germs and the diners from food that might have been contaminated by someone’s coughing or sneezing. These guards can be quickly and easily cleaned to maintain a sanitary surface.
Now, plastic sneeze guards are a common sight in nearly all retail and commercial locations as well. They still serve the same purpose, one of protection. Rather than covering a steam tray full of egg rolls, however, they provide safety for the cashier at the grocery store and you while you’re purchasing supplies at the hardware store. You can think of them as a larger equivalent of a face mask.
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Keeping Children Safe in School with Plastic Sneeze Guards
The installation of plastic sneeze guards is a proven way to limit the spread of germs and viruses. It is an ideal solution for schools, daycare centers, and related settings where children are in close proximity.
These transparent sneeze guards do their jobs very well by blocking the spread of bacteria, and other pathogens while being unobtrusive due to their clarity. They are not substantial menacing barriers that will intimidate anyone, just the opposite. Their presence will provide peace of mind to students and staff alike that steps are being taken to increase safety.
Plastic sneeze barriers are commonly made from acrylic, but they can also be made from polycarbonate sheet, impact-modified acrylic, or PETG sheets for greater durability.
Not only are these guards useful for protecting children and staff in a school, but they have also proven helpful in other locations. It’s not unusual to see them in pharmacies, grocery store checkouts, convenience stores, and a wide range of different businesses and organizations. Plastic sneeze guards are a simple and beneficial tool for decreasing the risk of the spread of airborne viruses. They are affordable, long-lasting, and easy to install and clean. They are a product that protects people on both sides at the same time.