In-House Vs. Outsourcing Office Cleaning: What’s In It For You?

With Outsourcing Cleaning, Can You Do More with Less?

With economy uncertainty a veritable certainty, building owners and facility managers continue to look for cost saving measures. But budget cuts that result in a noticeable service decline cause as many problems as they solve. The question is, of course, how do you do more work with less money? How do you get quality cleaning and maintenance with a tight janitorial budget. Can you actually do more with less? Or can you at least reduce services in a way that doesn’t impact the overall quality or perception of your facility maintenance?

In an effort to answer these questions, many companies are turning towards outsourcing commercial office cleaning to get a more cost effective office cleaning solution. Outsourcing your professional office cleaning presents a number of benefits, not all of them financial. Outsourcing janitorial can help you understand and manage costs, improve building services as well as protect your buildings assets. Outsourcing your cleaning to an office cleaning services provider can help you save money, reduce operating costs, and on the whole create a safer, cleaner and more comfortable work environment.

The Dollars and Sense of Outsourcing Office Cleaning Services

Of course, the primary incentive in outsourcing your building maintenance to an office cleaning company is to save you money. First, having an experienced, trained and resourced office cleaning service will immediately save you money. This savings is accomplished in part by scale, cheaper bulk cleaning supplies and equipment and the like, as well as hiring, on-boarding and training systemized because unlike you, your janitorial company engages in this process all the time. Larger janitorial companies are well established and have a lot of bulk purchasing power so that they save money on equipment, supplies, consumable goods, among other things, savings that are passed along to you.

Outsourcing your office cleaning services saves you all the money and time that go into recruiting, training, screening and managing cleaning staff. Looking at all the money that goes into paying for management, benefits, healthcare, screening and other time consuming administrative and management tasks and it is easy to see the benefits of outsourcing to a professional office cleaning company. Finding the right office cleaners for your building will get more value you for your dollar. Any experience office cleaning company is able to provide a better service for less money (and fewer headaches for you). Cleaning isn’t part of their business, it is their business.

With Maintenance, It All Comes Down to Experience

Work on anything long enough and your going to build some mastery of it. The same is true for your office cleaning services company. It is possible to manage your own in-house office cleaning service, but is it really worth your time and money? Is that where your energy is best spent? Having an in-house cleaning service is no small feat, it is most literally like running a business inside of another business. Do you really want to spend time and money learning the ins and outs of the commercial cleaning industry when you could simply pay less for a company that has already mastered them in addition to offloading the responsibility that comes along with it? What it comes down to is that office cleaning companies have years of experience and a singular focus that you likely do not. With all of their resources, time, and money directed towards providing a solid office cleaning experience, they will always outperform an in-house cleaning service.

In-House Office Cleaning Can’t Compete with Outsourced Services

It is difficult to balance an in-house office cleaning service and your actual business. The problem is, if you don’t manage your in-house office cleaning service as a professional business, you aren’t going to get the same level of service. Outsourcing your commercial office cleaning eliminates the problems that come with using your staff to handle maintenance and general cleaning and trying to run the ‘business within a business’.

As a Facility Manager, you know how much time comes with managing a team and trying to get what you want from them. On top of that, no matter how much work you put into it, it will never scale. All the training and equipment you have will never be used outside of your building. You don’t generate extra income from competent cleaning staff, in fact, you might actually lose it because of the cost of equipment, supplies and consumables. This isn’t the only problem either, here are some of the core administrative and management responsibilities inherent in managing office cleaners:

• Health insurance
• Liability insurance
• Equipment costs and maintenance
• Cost of other cleaning products and supplies
• Direct supervision expense
• Employee vacations & absences
• Cost to maintain equipment
• Payroll taxes
• Employee turnover & retraining
• Workers comp claims
• Direct payroll expenses

Outsourced Office Cleaning Companies Can Manage Change

One frequent concern we here voiced about outsourcing is “how will we get coverage during times that are particularly busy?”. Certainly not with in-house cleaning! Unlike your in-house cleaning service, commercial office cleaning service providers have enough staff to cover you when their staff get sick or when your experiencing unanticipated higher than normal needs. These companies know that you will sometimes need more service and sometimes less and as such they are equipped to change and adapt according to your needs.

Outsourcing Can Help Shield You from Liability

Having an in-house office cleaning service means that you also get all of the liabilities and problems that come with one. As you’ll find in almost any service industry, office cleaning comes with a number of liabilities. Fortunately, when you contract with a commercial office cleaning services provider, you don’t need to worry about them because you are no longer responsible for dealing with them. In fact, many office cleaning companies will insure their own employees as well as you as the facility owner to shield you from third party litigations. It is the same as always, a company whose sole goal is to provide a solid office cleaning experience is always going to perform better, such is the nature of specialization. 

Don’t Waste Your Time Managing Something Someone Else Can Do

As a Facility Manager, you probably already have enough managing to do. Outsourcing your office cleaning to the right contractor will help give you less to deal with because you can trust them to deal with problems, both small and large. You get to offload all of the traditional managerial tasks to your contractor so that you can focus on other, more important duties. Instead of dealing with the headache of hiring, training, purchasing equipment and products, repair and maintenance among other time consuming things, your cleaning company will shoulder the responsibilities.

Make Your Life Easier in More Ways Than One

Another thing that your larger, professional office cleaning company can do for you is deal with integrated facility solutions. Many office cleaning service providers include an umbrella of services like electrical, plumbing, painting, HVAC, construction cleanup and carpet cleaning among other things. This allows you to get regular maintenance done around your facility without having to go through another contractor or doing any additional due diligence work. If you already have a commercial office cleaning company you trust it can save you a lot of time to take advantage of their services and trained technicians.

Sometimes You Need the Best Equipment to Do the Best Job

Another way that outsourcing your office cleaning to a professional saves you time and money is through equipment costs. Professional office cleaning companies invest in newer, better, more efficient equipment much more regularly than you would with cleaning service operated in-house. This is because their business is cleaning and arming themselves with effective, efficient equipment advances their bottom line. Due to scale and repetition, everything from equipment to technology to green cleaning to chemical usage is improved with a professional janitorial company.

The Real Cost of Using In-House Cleaning Services

What it boils down to is how the math adds up. Will outsourcing your office cleaning to a building services contractor save you time and money or not? It can be easy to compare the full suite of services that a commercial office cleaning company can offer to the payroll of your in-house office cleaning. But this isn’t a fair comparison, if you really want to compare the two you need to consider everything that goes into it:

• Employee vacations & absences
• Scheduling and vacation
• Insurance & Worker’s Comp
• Employee hiring, training & turnover
• Payroll expense
• Cost of equipment, cleaning chemicals, & cleaning supplies
• Payroll taxes
• Benefits administration
• Direct supervision expense
• Cost to secure, service, store and maintain equipment

Between these different things, the cost in time and money begins to add up. Figure out what in-house cleaning is costing you and compare it to what a prospective office cleaning service can offer. The decision should be clear.