During COVID, every business in the country became a hygiene operation overnight. Sanitiser stations appeared at every door. Touch-free dispensers replaced communal soap bars. Washroom checks went from "whenever someone remembers" to a logged, timed routine.
Then restrictions lifted. And quietly — not all at once, but steadily — many of those standards came back down.
The sanitiser stands got moved to storage. The washroom check sheets stopped being filled in. The consumables budget got trimmed because "we don't need all that any more." It happened gradually enough that nobody made a conscious decision to lower standards. It just… happened.
Here's the problem: the reasons those standards existed haven't gone anywhere. And the cost of letting them slip is landing on businesses right now — in sickness absence, customer complaints, and regulatory findings.
The Numbers Haven't Improved — They've Got Worse
There's a common assumption that post-COVID, we're all healthier and more hygiene-aware. The data says otherwise.
According to the Office for National Statistics, UK workers lost almost 149 million working days in 2024 due to sickness or injury, with an average absence rate of 2.0%. That's not a pandemic figure — that's a post-pandemic figure. And the leading causes aren't exotic illnesses. They're the everyday ones: colds, flu, norovirus, stomach bugs. The kind of things that spread through poor hand hygiene and shared surfaces.
To put that in perspective: a business with 50 employees, each losing an average of 4.6 sick days per year (the ONS average), is absorbing roughly 230 lost working days annually. Even if only a fraction of those absences trace back to workplace-transmitted illness, the cost is substantial — in temporary cover, lost output, and team disruption.
It's a pattern facilities managers across the UK are seeing repeated each winter: a business removes its hygiene provisions, and within months the consequences arrive — in sickness absence, in customer complaints, or in both.
Hygiene Fatigue Is Real — and It's Costing Money
There's a name for what happened after COVID: hygiene fatigue. The sustained effort of maintaining pandemic-level precautions became exhausting. People stopped sanitising their hands on entry. Businesses stopped restocking dispensers daily. The urgency faded.
The problem is that hygiene fatigue doesn't affect the pathogens. Influenza doesn't care that you're tired of washing your hands. Norovirus doesn't respect the fact that your team "already went through COVID." The viruses and bacteria that cause common workplace illness are exactly as transmissible as they were in 2019 — arguably more so, because immunity patterns shifted during lockdowns.
Consider three illustrative scenarios — composites drawn from common patterns — where hygiene fatigue creates measurable cost:
Scenario 1: The restaurant that stopped checking washrooms hourly. During COVID, a city-centre restaurant ran washroom checks every 60 minutes — soap, paper towels, sanitiser, general cleanliness. After restrictions lifted, checks dropped to twice daily. Within six months, the restaurant received three Google reviews mentioning dirty washrooms. One reviewer wrote: "Food was lovely, but the toilets were disgusting. Won't be back." For a restaurant averaging £45 per cover, losing even two tables a week to washroom-related reviews costs over £18,000 a year in lost revenue.
Scenario 2: The office that cut the consumables budget. A managed office building with 120 daily users cut its washroom consumables budget by 30% post-COVID, switching to a cheaper soap and reducing paper towel stock. Sickness absence in the building rose from 3.2% to 4.1% over the following winter. The HR team attributed it to "a bad flu season" — but the neighbouring building, which maintained its hygiene provisions, saw no equivalent spike.
Scenario 3: The salon that removed the sanitiser stand. A hair salon removed its entrance sanitiser station in mid-2023, reasoning that clients no longer expected it. Several regular clients mentioned they'd appreciated it. Two switched to a competitor that still had visible hygiene provisions. In a business where the average client spends £60–£80 per visit and comes monthly, losing even a handful of regulars over something as simple as a sanitiser dispenser is a genuine financial hit.
The FSA Study That Should Worry Every Food Business
In 2023, the Food Standards Agency published research showing that almost one-third of UK food workers failed to wash their hands properly after using the toilet. Not members of the public — trained, employed food handlers in regulated businesses.
That statistic is alarming on its own. But it becomes even more significant in context. Food businesses in England operate under the Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006, which explicitly require adequate hand-washing facilities, soap, and a hygienic means of drying hands. Non-compliance isn't a suggestion — it's a regulatory finding that can result in a lower Food Hygiene Rating, enforcement action, or closure. (For a detailed breakdown, see our UK hygiene regulations guide.)
If one in three trained food workers isn't washing their hands properly, the issue isn't individual laziness. It's systemic: inadequate facilities, empty dispensers, missing signage, or a workplace culture where hand hygiene has quietly become optional.
For any business that handles food — restaurants, cafés, pubs, hotels, workplace canteens, catering companies — this is a direct operational risk. And the fix is not complicated. It's about making hand hygiene the path of least resistance: soap that's always stocked, paper towels that are always available, signage that's visible, and a routine that gets checked.
What Businesses Are Actually Getting Wrong
Most businesses that have let hygiene standards slip haven't done so deliberately. The decline follows a predictable pattern:
- The budget cut. Washroom consumables are reclassified from "essential" to "overhead." The procurement team switches to a cheaper supplier or reduces order frequency.
- The empty dispenser. Soap runs out on a Friday. Nobody restocks until Monday. Paper towels are gone by lunchtime. Nobody checks until the cleaner arrives at 6pm.
- The broken routine. Washroom checks that were logged hourly during COVID become daily, then weekly, then "whenever someone complains."
- The invisible decline. Standards drop so gradually that nobody notices — until a hygiene rating inspection, a customer complaint, or a wave of staff sickness makes the problem visible.
The common thread is that hygiene provisions are treated as a cost rather than an investment. The soap dispenser, the paper towels, the sanitiser stand — these aren't expenses to be minimised. They're infrastructure that prevents far more expensive problems.
What Good Looks Like: A Practical Checklist
Maintaining post-COVID hygiene standards doesn't require pandemic-level spending. It requires consistency. Here's what that looks like across different business types:
| Provision | Office / Managed Building | Restaurant / Café / Pub | Clinic / Salon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand soap at every basin | Yes — refillable dispensers | Yes — checked hourly during service | Yes — clinical-grade if CQC-registered |
| Paper hand towels | Interleaved or centrefeed | Z-fold or interleaved (recommended over dryers for food settings) | Paper towels preferred (infection control) |
| Hand sanitiser | Entry points, kitchen, meeting rooms | Entry, bar, till point, staff area | Every treatment station + entry |
| Washroom check frequency | Twice daily minimum | Every 1–2 hours during service | Between clients in treatment rooms |
| Signage | Hand-washing reminders | Required by food hygiene law | Infection control notices |
| Consumable stock buffer | 2-week minimum on site | 1-week minimum (higher turnover) | 2-week minimum |
None of this is revolutionary. None of it requires specialist equipment or consultancy. It requires someone to own the responsibility, a reliable supply of consumables, and a check routine that actually gets followed. For a step-by-step approach, see our guide to setting up a hygienic commercial washroom.
The Customer Perception Problem
COVID changed customer expectations permanently. Before 2020, a soap dispenser running empty in a restaurant washroom was mildly annoying. Now, it's a signal. Customers interpret visible hygiene — or the lack of it — as a proxy for how well a business is run.
This isn't speculation. A 2014 Tork Insight Survey found that 30% of customers reported spending less time at venues with poorly maintained washrooms. That data predates COVID by six years — and the pandemic has only intensified these expectations. Post-COVID consumers are more attuned to hygiene signals than any previous generation of customers.
For hospitality and service businesses, the washroom is the canary in the coal mine. A guest who finds a clean, well-stocked washroom won't necessarily tell anyone. A guest who finds an empty soap dispenser, no paper towels, and a grimy bin will tell everyone — usually via a review that stays online permanently.
The economics are straightforward: maintaining washroom hygiene costs a predictable, modest amount per month. Losing customers to poor hygiene perceptions costs significantly more — and the damage to online reputation compounds over time.
What This Means for Your Business
If you've read this far, you probably already know whether your own standards have slipped. Most businesses don't need to be convinced that hygiene matters — they need to close the gap between what they believe and what they actually provide.
Three practical steps that make a genuine difference:
- Audit your washrooms honestly. Walk through every washroom in your premises right now. Is every soap dispenser full? Are paper towels stocked? Is the sanitiser stand still there, or did it get moved to a cupboard? If you find gaps, they've been there for a while — and your staff and customers have noticed.
- Set a check routine and stick to it. Washroom checks are only effective if they happen consistently. A logged check sheet — even a simple one — creates accountability. If checks are happening, standards stay up. If they're not, standards drift.
- Keep stock on site. The most common reason for empty dispensers is not budget — it's supply gaps. Running out of paper towels on a Thursday and not receiving a delivery until the following Tuesday means four days of compromised hygiene. Keep a buffer of at least one to two weeks' worth of consumables on site at all times.
At Tisha, we supply the consumables that keep washrooms running properly — paper hand towels, toilet rolls, soap and sanitiser, and the dispensers and bins to go with them. Delivery is 2–5 working days UK-wide. No contract. No minimum order. Start with one case and see for yourself.
