When it comes to detecting pest activity, your employees can be one of your best resources. From housekeeping and maintenance teams to security personnel and foodservice staff, employees throughout your facility may notice the first signs of a pest problem—often before it has a chance to grow.
Pests don’t take a break when your business does. They are constantly searching for food, moisture, shelter, and suitable temperatures, and commercial buildings can provide all four. If pest activity goes unnoticed, it can contribute to contamination, property damage, interruptions to operations, failed inspections or audits, and harm to your reputation.
The good news is that your employees don’t need to be pest experts. They simply need basic knowledge of the signs to watch for, the conditions that can attract pests, and the proper way to report what they find.
How Can Employees Help With Pest Prevention?
Your employees can contribute to pest prevention in many ways beyond their primary job responsibilities. By incorporating pest awareness into the tasks they already perform, you can create a workplace where everyone helps identify potential problems.
Security Personnel
Security teams spend a great deal of time moving throughout a facility, making them another valuable set of eyes. When time allows and it doesn’t interfere with their primary responsibilities, security personnel can inspect areas that may receive less attention, using a flashlight to check places such as basements, storage rooms, kitchens, cafeterias, and other potential pest harborage areas.
Cleaning Staff
Housekeeping and cleaning employees regularly enter rooms, workspaces, and common areas in hotels, hospitals, senior living communities, and other facilities. Their daily responsibilities put them in an excellent position to notice something out of the ordinary. Train cleaning staff to recognize clues such as droppings, live or dead insects or rodents, damaged materials, unusual odors, and other evidence of pest activity. Catching these signs early can help address an issue before it is noticed by a customer, guest, resident, or patient.
Restaurant and Foodservice Staff
Restaurants and commercial kitchens can provide pests with easy access to food, moisture, and shelter. Bartenders, servers, cooks, dishwashers, and other foodservice employees should understand how their everyday habits can support pest prevention. Encourage employees to clean up spills quickly, keep food covered and properly stored, maintain clean workspaces, and report overflowing trash or dumpster concerns. They should also be aware of potential pest activity around kitchens, food storage areas, loading docks, and other high-risk locations.
Maintenance Teams
Maintenance employees often have access to nearly every part of a facility, giving them another important opportunity to identify conditions that could invite pests. While completing routine repairs and inspections, maintenance personnel can look for cracks and gaps, damaged doors, worn seals, plumbing leaks, standing water, and openings around pipes, wires, and other utility lines. Addressing these issues can eliminate potential pest entry points and harborage conditions.
Everyone on Your Team
Every employee uses some combination of restrooms, breakrooms, kitchens, hallways, storage areas, stairwells, and common spaces. Employees also enter and leave the building throughout the day and may notice pest activity around the exterior. With basic training, any employee could be the person who notices a hornet nest beginning to form, spots rodent droppings near a storage area, or sees an unfamiliar insect before a minor issue develops into something more serious.
What Signs of Pest Activity Should Employees Watch For?
Pests aren’t always easy to see directly. In many cases, the evidence they leave behind is the first indication that they are present. Teach employees to keep an eye out for:
- Live or dead pests
- Droppings or other pest waste
- Gnawing or chewing damage
- Damaged food packaging or building materials
- Nesting materials
- Grease or rub marks along walls
- Unusual or unexplained odors
- Insect larvae or pupae
- Pest activity near doors, windows, equipment, or storage areas
Employees should also understand the purpose of pest monitoring equipment used throughout the facility. Depending on the property and its specific pest risks, your pest management professional may place glue boards, sticky traps, pheromone traps, fly lights, or other monitoring devices. Any unusual activity on or around these devices should be reported rather than ignored.
Everyday Habits Can Help Prevent Pests
Pest awareness isn’t limited to identifying pests. Employees can also help reduce the conditions that make a facility attractive to them. Because pests need resources such as food, water, and shelter, simple daily practices can make a meaningful difference. Encourage your team to:
- Clean up food and beverage spills as soon as possible
- Keep food in sealed, appropriate containers
- Keep trash containers closed
- Avoid leaving food or dirty dishes unattended
- Report plumbing leaks and standing water
- Maintain clean, organized work areas
- Report cracks, gaps, damaged doors, and other potential entry points
A seemingly minor maintenance issue, such as a leaking pipe or opening around a utility line, can create an opportunity for pests to enter or establish themselves. Promptly reporting these conditions allows them to be corrected before they contribute to a larger problem.
Give Employees an Easy Way to Report Pest Activity
Training employees to recognize pest activity is only useful if they know what to do when they find it. Make sure everyone understands who should receive a pest report and how to submit one. A straightforward reporting process can collect important details, including the date and time of the sighting, the location, the type of pest if it can be identified, how many pests were observed, and any unusual conditions in the area.
It is also important to create a workplace culture where reporting a pest sighting is viewed as a helpful action—not as an opportunity to place blame. Early reporting gives facility managers and pest management professionals a chance to investigate and respond while the issue is still easier to manage.
Keep Pest Awareness Part of the Conversation
Employee pest training doesn’t need to be lengthy, complicated, or expensive. Brief training sessions, seasonal reminders, newsletters, digital resources, and simple pest identification materials can keep the topic fresh without overwhelming your team. Focus training on the pests and warning signs that are most relevant to your particular facility and the jobs your employees perform.
A quick-reference pest guide can also be a useful resource. Keep copies in employee areas, post information in breakrooms, or make materials available digitally so employees can easily refer back to them when they need to identify a pest or recognize signs of activity.
You can download a full white paper about how to train your employees to be on the look for pests and an expert pest guide from Waltham here.
Work With Your Pest Management Professional
Employee awareness is most effective when it is incorporated into a broader Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program. Your pest management professional can help identify the pests most likely to affect your facility, point out areas of concern, explain conditions that can encourage pest activity, and show employees what to look for and how to report it.
When employees, facility management, and your pest management provider work together, everyone has a role in protecting the facility. Whether you operate a food processing plant, hotel, warehouse, restaurant, healthcare facility, or another commercial property, Waltham Pest Services can help. Our local pest management experts use science-based solutions to help protect your business and can provide guidance and training to help your employees recognize potential pest problems.
Call Waltham First.