Maintaining your building between your regularly scheduled janitorial services can be tough, especially in large, busy facilities. A clean building first thing when you arrive in the morning is no guarantee that your building will look good throughout the day. Little things from mud on a rainy day to a busy meeting that left an oft used conference room in disarray can throw maintenance into a tailspin. What if you could do the majority of basic cleaning in the evenings, yet have at your disposal a professional poised to help you maintain your building’s appearance throughout the day? That’s precisely what a day porter could do for you! Day porters help with daytime cleaning tassk, but they also keep your building looking presentable and sharp so that visitors, employees and tenants are never left to ruminate over overlooked tasks or maintenance items building up. Discreetly and without interfering with business activities, your day porter operates in the background assuring everything is as it should be.
Many times as janitorial service providers, we are asked, “what do day porters do exactly?” We tell customers, “a day porter can pretty much do whatever you need them to.” A Day Porter or Day Porter Staff operates much like a daytime cleaning service with added benefits. Maybe you need help with things like setting up for a meeting or assisting an employee in moving offices. Your Day Porter will provide vital services that keep your building running smoothly, throughout the day. You and your facility needs really determine their focus. Of course, there are some duties typical for most Day Porters, these include things like:
Your day porter provides you with a vital service, he or she can keep your facility clean and in good repair throughout the day and help you check off items that can quickly add up on your ‘to do’ list. Often times, a Day Porter is provided with an established list of duties to perform and a schedule on which to perform them. Because your Day Porter works during regular business hours with you and your staff, they can help you as the need comes up with nearly anything.
Because your Day Porter takes their cues from you, you should, along with the help of your janitorial services company, put together a schedule of duties for your day porter. Being clear about what is required will go a long way in helping your commercial cleaning company find a person who is a great fit for your facility. Because day porters work during the day and often closely with you and your staff, it is imperative they are a good fit both among your staff and the overall culture in your company. Your commercial cleaning company can work with you to determine what you need from your Day Porter and how they can customize the position to best meet your needs. You understand your individual facility and your building services company has experience helping make their day porters a nearly indispensable part of your everyday building maintenance. Working in tandem, you can establish a job description and schedule of duties that helps your day porter understand how best to assist you and allows you to track the overall success of your Day Porter program.
As mentioned, an effective day porter can become integral to your building’s smooth functioning, that is IF they are a good fit. With over thirty-five years in the building services business, we have come to understand that some personalities do incredibly well in the day porter positions. The people who tend to be the best fit for these critical service positions are positive, friendly, helpful, quick learners who can both dutifully execute routine tasks and thrive in the changing challenges the position offers. Your cleaning company must appreciate the magnitude of finding the right individual for your facility as well as the fundamentals of attracting, interviewing, screening, hiring and training great teams. Are they conducting thorough background checks including criminal background checks and drug testing every single time? People are the core of the business of cleaning, is your janitorial company doing all they can to bring you the best people? Anything less diminishes the trust and value you get with a successful day porter program.
The most important part of a successful day porter program is communication. When you take the time to delineate those tasks most important to you, you let your day porter know what they need to do to be successful. Every job has favorite and least favorite tasks. If you aren’t clear with your day porter, they might gravitate toward their most favored tasks and tend to put off less pleasant duties to another time or push them to the evening cleaning team. And because they get so many requests, it can be a common trap that day porters fall into where they get so busy filling requests that they start to see more rote tasks as less important. So communicating with your day porter and the janitorial company that manages them is integral to getting what you need. Likewise, this may mean limiting who can make a request and having a point person who can help the day porter prioritize their work load in a way that works best for the individual needs of your facility.
Communicating directly with your day porter is a good first step but remember, your day porter is the responsibility of your building services contractor and thus, the majority of management falls to them. If issues come up with your day porter, don’t hesitate to let your Janitorial Contractor know before little issues become big problems. And if the person serving as your Day Porter just doesn’t seem to be the right fit, tell you janitorial company. They want you to have a good fit so that you get all of the promised benefits of this critical facility service.
A Day Porter service adds an extra professional feel to your facility helping it run like clockwork throughout the day, every day. If you are considering a Day Porter service, do business in Southeast Michigan and would like to know more, please contact Stathakis today at (800)278-1884 so we can assist you in designing a Day Porter Program to meet your facility’s needs.