A solid office cleaning service can impact how smoothly your facility and operation run in more ways than might be initially obvious. An experienced industry professional can make your job as Facility Manager significantly easier, but a subpar office cleaning service can do a lot of harm to your employees’ satisfaction and to your bottom line. Especially in the current atmosphere of fear and confusion regarding Covid-19 and precautions, having an office cleaning company that understands the science of cleaning and CDC commercial disinfection procedures is critical to the health, safety and positive perception of your facility.
A solid office cleaning service comes with some clear benefits:
Clearly having the right commercial office cleaning company is critical to proper facility function, but finding the right provider for your building can be challenging. The office cleaning marketplace is a crowded one and it can seem near impossible to sort through all of the numerous and varied companies that want your business. Fortunately for you, we have tips and tricks that can make this often cloudy process, clear and straightforward.
Starting off your partnership right means starting with a clear and easy to understand work specification. If you don’t know exactly what your office cleaning company is going to do, at what price and how often, you can’t hold them accountable for anything. A work specification needs to be clear and specific. Many common problems that Facility Managers have with their office cleaning companies down the line can be traced back to a lack of a clear work specification. Don’t let this be you, never start a partnership without a proper and specific work specification.
Solid screening practices are absolutely essential for any cleaning company. A professional service is delivered with professional frontline cleaning staff. In this case, the quality of your cleaning is directly related to the quality of individuals hired. Needless to say, there is no reason to risk your building or the safety of your people on companies that don’t effectively screen their own people. At the bare minimum, your prospective office cleaning service provider should be doing a couple things:
It isn’t worth the risk to partner with a company that doesn’t take these simple precautions. If they don't take their hiring process seriously, how can you expect them to take your facility seriously?
The first step in getting responsive service is getting in touch with the person responsible for handling your complaints, concerns and changes. Your facility is never going to be static and no one is ever going to be perfect. The best way to keep up with these changes and to quickly address and fix problems is to take advantage of your commercial office cleaning companies communication framework. Don’t wait until things are spiraling out of control into a time consuming and costly disaster. Get in touch with your customer service representative and start communicating before you need them. This gives them the most opportunity to make the changes you need and get back on track.
Your office cleaner’s janitorial closet is like a metaphorically health bar for the quality of the work that they are doing. A well organized, cleaned and service janitorial closet is often a sign that your building is being well cleaned, serviced and taken care of. On the other hand, a janitorial closet that looks like a small, dirty tornado got locked inside it is probably a good indicator that your facility isn’t getting the care it needs. Of course, this isn’t a surefire way to make sure that your office cleaning company is doing its job, but it is one indicator that you can use to get a feel for the quality of the service. If they don’t care about the state of their own equipment, why should they care about any of yours?
It's all fun and games until something goes wrong. Do you really want to be in the line of fire of some expensive third-party litigations? If your commercial office cleaner doesn’t have proper insurance coverage, there’s a strong chance liability is going to fall on you. It might seem like a small detail but confirming proof that your company is insured with an authentic Insurance Certificate and making sure it stays up to date can save you a lot of money down the road. Things are going to come up, don’t get caught without proper industry insurance. At the end of the day, a slightly cheaper commercial cleaning company without insurance is never going to save you more money than a lawsuit is going to take from you. It simply isn’t worth the risk.
All too often we see Facility Managers whose cleaning companies have played the pricing game with them. When you don’t have a clear contract regarding pricing and service changes, it is easy for an office cleaning company to monkey around with charges. With cleaning budgets already being balanced on a razor’s edge, you need to keep careful track of what work your cleaning service agreed to do and at what price. In the same vein, regular janitorial inspections help keep your office cleaners accountable for the work that they agreed to do. Don’t let little tasks slip through the cracks, a couple hours every month can make a world of a difference in consistency and quality.