Just because you can do everything doesn’t mean that you can do everything well. Like with many other things, statistics bear out that specialization in cleaning services is better and more efficient than generalization. So team cleaning, or cleaning where duties are grouped and performed by a specific team member throughout the building, are significantly more effective than zone cleaning, or cleaning where one person cleans one area taking on a multitude of tasks.
The more duties you give to a single cleaner, the more likely they are to forget tasks or do some tasks poorly. Especially in bigger, more complex facilities, cleaning by zone or floor can result in a single cleaner doing many different tasks, all with their own supplies and equipment resulting in higher equipment costs and less effective cleaning.
Cleaning like this, also known as zone cleaning, each cleaner is required to carry all the required equipment for each task and often causes problems with storage and maintenance all while adding to cost to the service as a result of lost labor hours.
While some smaller facilities really only need a single cleaner, team cleaning is often a better solution for medium to large sized buildings. Team cleaning has significant efficiency and cost advantages opposed to single cleaners in larger areas. With team cleaning, a single individual handling a small group of tasks with the specialized equipment for it will perform better and use fewer labor hours reducing costs. There are further cost savings because employee training is more focused and efficient, managing and evaluating work is easier and there are reduced costs associated with equipment maintenance and storage.
If you are in a budget crunch, you are not alone. Fortunately, team cleaning not only improves cleaning, it can help reduce costs. With team cleaning, individual cleaners perform a small set of tasks all throughout your facility. This might mean only dusting or only emptying trash cans while another person exclusively wipes down counters and windows or cleans restrooms. Many of these teams include a number of specialists depending on the size and needs of your facility. This specialization of cleaning duties helps reduce cross-contamination and also insures that the task is done the right way, every time. This also makes quality control a lot more straight forward because what each person is responsible for is crystal clear. Having a single person vacuum your entire facility as opposed to a team of many juggling the task between each other is always going to be more efficient. Similarly, one person vacuuming means one vacuum, less equipment cost, maintenance and storage.
In the service industry the highest costs come from labor. So if you want to reduce costs, you have to reduce the amount of labor hours needed. This has always been the case, but an increase to minimum wage in Michigan coupled with changes to healthcare requirements and coverage have compounded such costs to make commercial cleaning more costly than before. The next most expensive category in the cleaning industry is equipment. If a cleaning service is able to effectively combat those costs, a lot of their savings will get passed along to you. Team cleaning is one of the best ways to do this as it minimizes labor hours and the amount of required equipment without sacrificing the quality of you cleaning. How do they do this? Here's a list:
If you aren’t completely happy with the quality and price of your current janitorial services provider, than it may be time to start looking for a new one. Any company that makes a conscious effort to offer industry best practices including Team Cleaning, Smart Cleaning and looking for alternatives to save you the customer time and money is going to be a better partner than your average service provider.
Here at Stathakis, we deliver consistent, responsive, effective service and real value for businesses all over southeastern Michigan. With over thirty years in business, we have developed a standard of service delivery that works, just ask our customers. We work hard to create lasting partnerships and offer the businesses of southeastern Michigan the quality, cost-effective janitorial services they deserve. If you are a Facility Manager in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Royal Oak, Farmington Hills, Farmington, Dearborn, Livonia, Troy, Auburn Hills, Novi, Plymouth, and surrounding areas and you are looking for commercial cleaning services, office cleaning, school cleaning, industrial cleaning, medical cleaning or a janitorial company, please contact us to learn more about how we can help make your job at least a little easier and make your facility shine.