Information School News

The Health, Safety and Workplace Regulations 1992 state that “Sufficient toilet and washing facilities should be provided to allow everyone at work to use them without unreasonable delay”. Yet people who work on the move - like delivery drivers, care workers and tradespeople - often struggle to access the necessary facilities. The Hand Hygiene at Work project , led by Dr Sophie Rutter from the Information School alongside Dr Lauren White from the Sheffield Methods Institute, is looking at this issue and what can be done to address it. There has been a recognised decline in provision of publicly accessible toilets. The project found that this particularly affects workers who are on the move. Seeking out access to toilets often costs workers valuable time as well as money, when factoring in things like extra petrol costs for travelling out of their route to find these facilities. This disproportionately affects those who might urgently need to access facilities such as those who are me...

New research from the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds could improve hand hygiene in office settings using new ‘smart’ hand sanitisers Developed by British hand hygiene technology company, Savortex, the smart sanitisers can provide real-time data on how often people use them, send reminders to staff to sanitise their hands and help companies refill sanitisers more effectively Partnership shows how research can quickly develop new solutions for battling the pandemic Good hand hygiene is a proven, effective method for preventing the spreading of viruses including Covid-19 'Smart' hand sanitisers that can provide data on workplace hand hygiene are being trialled across the country, as part of research by the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds into how best to engage people with the latest Covid-19 workplace hand hygiene guidance. The new technology can grab the attention of the users with integrated video screens to display the latest workplace hand hygiene guidance and provid...

Now Wash Your Hands Good hand hygiene is necessary to control and prevent infection, but how do we get our children to adequately wash their hands? Dr Sophie Rutter, Lecturer in Information Management at The University of Sheffield has worked alongside colleagues from the University of Leeds, Leeds Beckett and Glasgow School of Arts to determine whether persuasive graphics are the answer to encouraging children to better wash their hands. You can read the full post here on the Social Sciences blog.