You arrive first thing in the morning to a clean building—no hand prints on the glass entry doors, fresh, well stocked restrooms, a gleaming reception area, but it doesn’t take much to undo the work of your evening cleaning service. A few dirty hands, coffee cups, someone changing offices, even a rainy day, and your building maintenance can go quickly downhill. Keeping your building looking its best between regularly scheduled evening cleaning services can be challenging, particularly in large, busy facilities. Many Facility Managers have come to appreciate having a janitorial service that does the required evening cleaning, those things easier to do when your building is quiet, and then a professional, at the ready person or team to keep your restrooms well stocked and your building looking great throughout the workday. That daytime maintenance role is filled by a day porter. Some Facility Managers ask, what’s a day porter? Day porters assist with daytime cleaning duties, likewise they attend to whatever they can so that your building never looks disheveled. Inconspicuously and without disrupting business activities, your day porter operates in the background assuring everything is running as it should.
First, Day Porters are charged with completing a set list of cleaning and maintenance responsibilities on a schedule of your choosing. These recurring duties become the foundation of your Day Porter’s responsibilities. They often include responsibilities like:
Beyond the typical, daily duties, your Day Porter can help wherever you really need it. Do you need help setting up for meetings? Maybe an employee could use a hand moving offices. Need someone to clean a conference room after a busy meeting? Your Day Porter is there to function as an extra pair of hands, assisting you where you need help the most so that you can focus on other tasks and keep your facility running smoothly.
Daytime cleaning and making the most of a day porter requires a little planning and communication. When you first implement a day cleaning program, you have to keep in mind how to do it without disrupting business and even keep your building’s occupants notified of changes so that you minimize their inconvenience and even leave a door open for feedback on how to can adjust the day porter service to best fit your building’s needs. Day cleaning tasks are carried out far differently than an evening cleaning crew would do them. Quiet vacuums are a must and any distracting or disruptive tasks should be pushed to times that are least inconvenient. Likewise, because there are people moving about the building, your day porter must take caution with cords and obstacles and be diligent and consistent with safety signage on wet flooring to minimize the risk of slip and falls. Additionally, the use of green cleaners and low odor products can help maintain indoor air quality and be mindful of employees with allergies or sensitivities to odors. After you have implemented your day cleaning program, it is advised that you check in with tenants and occupants to see how it is working for them and areas where it might be adjusted to work better. This can help you catch minor issues before they become bigger problems.
A dayporter can become an indispensable part of your facility maintenance, but it requires a very specific kind of person. In order to be successful, your day porter must be a good fit for the requirements of the job and a good fit in your particular work environment. The day porter position requires that a person be helpful, friendly, and a fast learner who gets satisfaction from helping others. Likewise, they should be able to both dutifully complete routine tasks and thrive in the new and varying challenges the position offers. Likewise, they should have a willingness to adjust their duties to meet your ever changing needs. In order for your day porter program to be effective, your commercial cleaning company must understand how important it is to find the right individual. Additionally, your janitorial services company must not take any shortcuts in their hiring, screening and training processes. Day porter services are only as good as the individuals doing the job. It only makes sense to put the time into finding the right fit in your facility.
The most important part of a successful day porter program is the individual who fills the role. The second most important factor in determining the success of your day porter services is communication. Communicating your expectations and requirements clearly helps your day porter know what you need and expect. All of us have favorite and least favorite work tasks, you must be clear with your day porter or they can easily become busy with tasks they enjoy more while shifting away from doing day porter duties they like less but are integral to your facility running smoothly. It is a mistake to allow your day porter to push their duties off to the nighttime cleaning crew. Day porters, if they are effective, get busy fast and the best ones will likely need your help prioritizing their workload so that they don’t get overwhelmed by staff requests or off track.
Day Porters so often become a critical part of a facility’s smooth operation. The one thing we hear most from Facility Managers is why we didn’t convince them they needed one sooner. If you could use help keeping your building look its best around the clock, Day Porter services could transform your office cleaning and facility maintenance. Contact Stathakis at (800)278-1884 and let our team assist you in designing Day Porter services custom tailored to your facility.