Working behind the scenes, Day Porter services can help keep your facility looking good and running smoothly without you knowing that they are even there. Could you and your facility benefit from a Day Porter and what exactly does a Day Porter service do? The short answer is anything and nearly everything you need them to. The long answer is well, longer. Having a professional, effective Day Porter service is like having your own Justice League, a team of superheroes ready and willing to take on the next challenge. This extra person or extra people can help you as a Facility Manager keep your facilities looking and running their best around the clock. Having a Day Porter as part of your daytime crew means that your facility can be cleaned as needed and specific needs attended to without having to wait for your night time cleaners to deal with messes. Similarly, your http://www.stathakis.com/janitorial-services-detroit-michigan/day-porterda can help attend to day time cleaning tasks that can’t always wait for the evening cleaners like keeping restrooms fresh and restocked and meeting set up and tear down. Used effectively, a day porter or dayporter service can be a real lifesaver.

Your Day Porter Might Just be Superman in Disguise

While no Superman, you Day Porter can do almost anything you need them to. Day Porter services can vary company to company and are based on your budget but services often include:

1. Restroom Restocking
2. Setting up Meeting Rooms and Tearing them Back Down
3. Making Sure the Lobby is in Clean & Welcoming
4. Emptying Trash and Other Waste
5. Keeping Track of and Servicing High Traffic Areas
6. Keeping Common Areas Clean and Organized

While this list is far from exhaustive, it can give you a basic idea of where Day Porter services begin and then you add on duties that are specific to your needs and those of your facility to get day porter services custom tailored to fit your unique facility.

Maximizing Your Day Porter Service

Less isn’t more, MORE is more. In order for a Day Porter service to be a truly effective addition to your facility, they need to know what your facility needs and where their help will benefit you most. When you partner with a professional and effective Day Porter service, they are always looking for ways to help you and your customers. All you need to do is tell them what you need done and they can be a valuable tool for taking some of the more time consuming or difficult tasks of your to do list allowing you to focus on more important things.  The best way to take advantage of a Day Porter service is to determine which kind of daytime help is most useful in your building not only to you, but to your staff, customers, and tenants. Knowing these things, a Day Porter service can be a cost-effective way to help fill in service gaps as well as improving the overall condition of your facility during the day.

Put Up the Day Porter Service Signal to Get Some Help

Once you have identified the key areas that your facility needs help in, it is recommended that you work with your commercial cleaning company or janitorial company to put together a list of tasks for your Day Porter service. Giving your Day Porter service specific instructions on what needs to be done allows your building contractor to get you just the right person or the right people for the job. Putting together a plan for your commercial cleaning company is a good way to make sure that you don’t have overlap between your Day Porter and night cleaning services as well as a way to keep everyone accountable.

The Hero You Need & Deserve

While your Day Porter service isn’t a literal Superman, you’ll find that they quickly become an indispensable part of your team. But not everyone has the can do attitude, competency and helpful character needed to be an outstanding Day Porter. It requires a level of responsiveness, positivity, attention to detail and general helpfulness that you won’t find just anywhere. You want and need a dayporter that can work well with your other employees, that you are comfortable representing your company with customers and employees that may engage with your facility and day porter during business hours. For this to happen, your janitorial company has to make a serious effort to recruit, screen, and train the very best people for the job. Having the right people on your team is key to any successful Day Porter service. When business take shortcuts on thorough background checks such as criminal and drug screening, you run the risk of putting your facility and staff in danger. The best companies will avoid this at all costs as well as incorporate checks like employment verification and personality testing into their battery of screening tests. Without a clear understanding of how to recruit, interview, screen, and train the best people for the job, you could be stuck with zeros instead of heroes.

Just Point Them in the Right Direction

To have an effective Day Porter service, you have to know what duties are going to have the largest impact on your facility. Creating clear expectations of what you need done for your Day Porter service not only allows you to keep track of them, but also sets them up to succeed in your facility. No matter how much of a superhero your Day Porter is, without direction most will gravitate towards job duties that they prefer which may not line up with what your facility needs. Often the case is that your day porter is so useful, many of your other staff will be asking for their assistance. As such, even the best day porters may get bogged down in requests and have difficulties prioritizing. After all, it is so often the ‘special’ tasks that also garner the most attention and praise from you the Facility Manager. The best way to avoid this is to make it clear which tasks are the highest priority to keep your Day Porter service from putting them off to do other things they are asked to help with. Take a moment in your Day Porter’s shoes, they likely don’t know who is allowed to tell them what to do and who is not without approval from you. Having a clear list of responsibilities is the best way to address this as it means what you need done will always come first and extras will only be added as the other tasks allow. Communicating with your Day Porter service is the best way to get a Herculean amount of work done in your facility.

As you can clearly see, a Day Porter service can be a valuable addition to almost any facility and can be customized according the specific needs of your facility, staff, and budget. If this seems like something that would be beneficial for your building or you just want to give it a try contact Stathakis today at (800)278-1884 so we can assist you in designing a Day Porter customized to the individual needs of you and your facility.

Is Day Cleaning the solution for your facility? Do you know what day cleaning is and what it isn’t? Before we delve into the benefits and drawbacks of having a day cleaning service for your facility, let’s detail what a day cleaning service is. At its core, a day cleaning service is a conventional alternative or addition to after hours custodial and cleaning services. With day cleaning you have a janitorial and cleaning staff that works around your employees and tenants to keep your facility clean and looking good as the day progresses.  

The Benefits of Day Cleaning In Your Facility

One large impact day cleaning has in many facilities is significant energy savings. The decrease in energy usage stems from the amount of time the lights are on and how long the facility is in operation for. Further, having cleaning done during the day, instead of separately at night has some significant security benefits. First, you don’t have to be worried about staff in your building unsupervised. Similarly, you don’t have to worry about the safety of your cleaning and janitorial teams as your facility is much less likely to be a target when it is in the swing of things during the day. Finally, you can be sure that your facility is always properly secured instead of having to rely on your cleaning team to do it for you. As such, both from an energy and security point of view, having a day cleaning service can be a workable solution for many facilities.

Having your facility staffed during the day also offers some logistical advantages. For instance, you can have bathrooms supplies restocked as the day progresses meaning that no one will go without toilet paper.  This applies to having trashes emptied as well as the overall cleanliness of your building being maintained regardless of what is going on. Finally, having your cleaning and janitorial on site makes it easier to communicate and quickly address problems rather than the back and forth can plague the night cleaning and maintenance if communication isn’t optimal.

A Brief Overview of What You Stand to Gain

Here is a brief summary of the benefits of a day cleaning service:

• More responsive, facility specific care as well as simplified communication
• Considerably improved facility security
• Substantial energy savings
• Cleaning and maintenance staff become integrated with your own employees
• Day cleaning makes employees happy and building relationship between cleaning teams and your people

Some Possible Drawbacks of Day Cleaning:

• While day cleaning is often beneficial for any facility, it does present some practical considerations:
• Day cleaning practices that don’t incorporate green cleaning practices can impact air quality in your facility
• Day cleaning may disrupt workflow and other everyday activities if the staff isn’t well tuned to the facility
• Commercial cleaning companies must e cognizant about chemicals, noisy equipment and other possible disruptions
• Cleaners and other staff must be a good fit for the facility

Is Day Cleaning Disruptive?

While implementing an effective day cleaning service into your facility may pose some challenges and fix some problems, it isn’t the right solution for every facility. Many Facility Managers love the idea of all day cleaning but are rightly concerned about things such as noise. That being said, partnering with the right office cleaning company will mean that your staff and employees are much more likely to be a good fit. With cases like this, you cleaning staff will be an extension of your employees despite being contracted. Similarly, professional companies will use the right products such as low smell eco-friendly chemicals to promote successful daytime cleaning along with reduced noise vacuum cleaners. With these qualities, the right daytime commercial office cleaner won’t disrupt normal facility function.

The Beginning of a Successful Partnership

If you think that getting a day cleaning service could help keep your facility well maintained and clean, then you need to find the right company to do the work. Day cleaning has some specific benchmarks that need to be met in order to be successful, for instance: finding the right people, checks to insure that people in your facility are safe and trustworthy, comprehensive background and drug screening, as well as protective measures like employment verification and personality testing.

On the same side of the coin, any prospective cleaning company should have good people accompanied by solid training, products and equipment as well as the processes they use to keep everything running smoothly. Like every other professional business, the right commercial cleaning company will have a proven training system, responsive customer service, and top of the line cleaning equipment as well as competent management to deliver the best value to their customers.

Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Day Porter Service, But What Your Day Porter Service Can Do For You?

Your scheduled night cleaning service was at your office late last night and everything- the glass entry doors, the restrooms, the reception area, the cubicles- were left looking immaculate. But like most days, the day begins and people start to stream in to your facility. The day’s work begins and you notice that not even halfway through the day, all the work that was done the prior night has begun to unravel.

Trying to keep you building looking at its best between your regular cleaning times can be challenging at  best, especially in populated, large, busy facilities. What many Facility Managers have found to be a good solution to this all too common problem is a combination of a night cleaning service that can operate when your building is empty and quiet, and a Day Porter Service that can keep your facilities morning glow as the day progresses. A Day Porter Service is a person or team that attends to your building to make sure that it always looks fresh , clean and inviting. While they cannot perform as deep a cleaning as the night service might be able to in off hours, a Day Porter can be a valuable addition to your efforts to keep your facility looking presentable all day.

So What Does A Day Porter Actually Do?

“What exactly does a Day Porter do?” and “How is it different than what a night cleaning service does?” might be some questions that you have about this valuable service and how it might fit in in your facility. Here are some of the most common responsibilities a Day Porter Service has:

• Clean and ready conference rooms before and after meetings
• Monitoring and servicing restrooms
• Maintaining & refreshing common areas like kitchens, lunchrooms & patios
• Lobby maintenance
• Superintendent coverage
• Respond to spills and other urgent cleaning requests
• Trash and debris removal
• Restocking of restroom supplies
• Minor maintenance tasks
• Tidy all common areas
• Arranging and scheduling other maintenance tasks with your building services contractor
• Clear litter and debris from entryways and parking lots
• Meeting setup/tear down
• Keeping reception and patio areas clean

These are just a few of the many services that a Day Porter Service can provide. The beauty of having such a service is that it is flexible and customizable to your needs, problem areas and pain points

Day Porter Setup And Communication

While a Daytime cleaning service is designed to reduce the amount of work you have to do, it does require some planning and communication to get set up for success. The most important thing to talk about with your Day Porter Service is how to minimize the disruption in your facility when providing said service. Because your facility is likely filled with employees and customers alike, extra precautions need to be taken when cleaning. For instance, quiet vacuums must be used to reduce noise, disruptive tasks must be planned to minimize their impact, cords and other equipment must be kept safely out of the way, and consistent and clear signage must be used wherever necessary. Further, your Day Porter should use green, low odor cleaning products to improve indoor air quality as well as protect employees with allergies to stronger chemical solutions. After such precautions are established, keep in touch with the occupants in your building so that you can monitor and improve the service that your Day Porter provides so that your employees view your Day Porter as a helpful addition to your team rather than an unnecessary interruption.

Fitting Your Day Porter To Your Facility

Not everyone can be a Day Porter, or rather, not everyone can be a good Day Porter. The person fitting your day porter role should ideally be a person that is naturally helpful, friendly and an intuitive learner who derives satisfaction from helping others. Similarly, they need to be able to see a task through to the end, even if it's just routine cleaning, as well as be able to tackle new and difficult challenges that your facility may present. Even further, they need to be flexible so that they can easily accommodate your facilities needs as they change so as to provide the best possible service. Now, it isn’t your responsibility to find this one in a million person, that job is left to your commercial cleaning company. As long as your janitorial service provider uses extensive screening and training before installing a Day Porter in your facility, you can be sure that they will become an integral part of your operations.  

Communication, As They Say, Is Key

As we’ve said before, the best way to make sure that your Day Porter service is successful is to have the right person for the job. Even if you find this person, however, you need to communicate to make sure that everything goes smoothly. Being able to communicate your expectations and the specific needs of your facility is the key to making this all come together and take your office cleaning straight to the top! Without clear direction, your Day Porter service may get overwhelmed with requests from your staff, or they may not do all of the tasks that are integral to the function of your facility, pushing the work to your nighttime cleaner. When there is clear communication of expectations between you and your Day Porter, you can ensure that you receive an effective, useful service that will help keep you facility clean and well maintained.

Want to Get Started?

Facility Managers so often tell us that their Day Porters become an integral part of their facilities operations and cleaning. Even more often, they lament not getting a Day Porter sooner because of the significant, positive impact that they have. If you want your building looking its best around the clock, contact Stathakis at (800)278-1884 and let our team assist you in designing Day Porter services custom tailored to your facility.

Day Porter Services Keep Your Facility Looking It’s Best Around the Clock

After hours cleaning works for many facilities. Your evening office janitorial service gets their work done when the building is quiet and most people have gone home. The morning rolls around and you have a fresh, clean building to greet you. The entry way sparkles as you make your way into the building, the restrooms look clean and smell fresh with well stocked supplies and empty trash cans. No coffee cups litter the reception area, no waste cans near filled to the top, no salt, snow or water cling to the entry mats. It is great but as a Facility Manager, you are acutely aware of how little time it can take for a busy day to start to undo the hard work of your nightly office cleaners. In especially busy buildings with high traffic, sometimes a nightly janitorial service just isn’t enough. Sure the deep cleaning is best done at night but could you benefit from a day cleaning person or team dedicated to keeping your building looking its best around the clock?

A Day Porter Can Save You Time & Keep Things Shining

It can be helpful for many facilities to have both night time janitorial services doing deep cleaning in your building after hours, as well as a responsive daytime professional ready to meet daytime cleaning, stocking and helping needs. An extra set of hands during business hours can keep your building looking great around the clock and running smoothly. If you are unfamiliar with a day porter, what are day porter duties? What does a day porter do? Know that day porters can attend to daytime cleaning duties, perhaps clearing your reception area of coffee cups or preparing a meeting room both before and after an important meeting. Unobtrusively and without interrupting business activities, your day porter works efficiently in the background keeping your building on track. So what does a day porter actually do? It really depends on what you and your facility need but some basics include:

• Clear litter and debris from entryways and parking lots
• Keeping reception and patio areas clean
• Lobby maintenance
• Monitoring, servicing & restocking restrooms
• Keep all common areas clean
• Prepare conference rooms before and after meetings
• Periodic cleaning of common areas like kitchens, lunchrooms & patios
• Meeting setup/tear down
• Removing trash and debris
• Respond to spills and other time sensitive cleaning requirements
• Place and then remove any necessary safety signage
• Execute minor maintenance tasks light changing a light bulb
• Arranging and scheduling other maintenance tasks with your building services contractor
• Superintendent coverage

Over time, your day porter can function as an assistant helping you with any number of things. For example, perhaps an employee needs a hand moving to another office. Or maybe you need office furniture moved from a conference room for an event. These things and more are the responsive tasks you can count on for help from your day porter. 

The Difference Between Day Cleaning & After Hours Office Cleaning

Day cleaning, a day porter service and an evening janitorial service can work hand in hand and be very complimentary, but it does require a little planning and finesse. With a day porter attending to some cleaning during business hours, that person must be very mindful of the business activities going on around them and structure their services in such a way as they are minimally disruptive. So the vacuum, barring an unusual circumstance should be saved for the nighttime office cleaning crew whereas, a quick rewiping and restocking of a restroom can be done during normal business hours by your day porter. Not only must day cleaning be minimally distracting or disruptive, since there are people walking around the facility, your day porter must be mindful not to create safety hazards with cords and obstacles and be diligent and consistent with safety signage on wet flooring to minimize the risk of slip and falls. Similarly, using green products and low odor cleaning solutions can help accommodate employees who are smell sensitive or have allergies. It can be helpful to check in with employees and tenants after you have implemented your day cleaning program, making adjustments as needed to make the program work well for you and your facility.

Getting a Dayporter That’s A Real Team Player

Your dayporter needs to be cut from a certain cloth. We find that people who are naturally friendly, helpful, quick learners, positive and interested in learning more make great day porters. A day porter can become an essential part of your facility maintenance, but not just any person is suited for this important role. In order to be successful, your day porter should have a willingness to adjust their duties to meet your ever changing needs. Similarly, your janitorial company must be experienced both with finding a good fit for the position of day porter and then helping your day porter and after hours cleaning crew communicate effectively to assure you get the very best service possible. 

Setting Your Day Porter Up For Success

What is the single most component in a successful day porter program? It’s the person filling the role. What then is the second most important determiner of whether your day porter program is successful or not? That is how well your day porter or daytime cleaning staff communicate with your after hours cleaning team. The better they work and communicate, the better the services they deliver to you. First, you must communicate your expectations and requirements clearly with your day porter. Since there is so much variety in the position, it’s up to you to help your day porter and janitorial company know what you really need. Because day porters get busy in your facility fast as people tend to lean on them for help, it is important to be clear with your day porter what you expect them to attend to daily in spite of special requests and how to prioritize or ask for your help when deciding what is most critical and how to plan their work. It can happen where your day porter becomes so inundated with requests that they push off duties of theirs to the nighttime cleaning team, this not only means some important tasks aren’t being finished during the day, the added work can overwhelm evening janitorial services and create issues. Best to be clear from the beginning and if issues arise, communicate with your contract cleaning company so they can sort it out helping get things running smoothly in your facility.

Let Us Help You Get the Tailored Cleaning Services You Really Need

We talk to so many Facility Managers who wish they knew about the day porter program sooner. They so often find that the day porter becomes an integral part of their team and makes the job of keeping up with a busy, high traffic facility so much more manageable. 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.

A Day Porter Can Transform Your Building Services

Imagine a clean, well tended facility with shiny, clean windows, a clean reception area, fresh, well stocked restrooms and more, not just in the morning when you walk in but throughout the day. That is the magic of a dayporter. A dayporter works to keep your facility well tended around the clock so that those morning coffee rings on the tables in the lobby are gone in a flash and your restrooms never fall into a state of disarray with piled up trash and empty hand towels. For busy facilities and busy Facility Managers, a day porter program can completely transform your building maintenance.

What’s A Day Porter And What Can They Do For YOUR Facility?

So what is a day porter and what does a day porter do? It really depends upon you, your facility and your needs. A Day Porter Program can be built around the unique needs of your facility but there are some basics that most day porter programs cover. Day porters can function much the same as your Janitorial services but during the day as your building hums along. Different than day cleaning, a day porter adds value by their ability to be proactive in getting things done as well as taking direction well so that you can have them help you where it matters most. A day porter is essentially responsible for making sure your building looks clean and inviting around the clock so that your building looks presentable throughout the day not just first thing in the morning after the evening cleaning crew has done their job. Day porter services also differ as the day porter duties are done discreetly and unobtrusively so that business as usual is possible without interruptions.

Some of the day porter duties could include:

• Keeping lobbies clean
• Attending to common areas
• Assuring restrooms are clean
• Cleaning and disinfecting to prevent spread of bacteria on oft touched surfaces
• Restocking supplies in washrooms as needed
• Maintenance of walkways and lobbies
• Attending to minor maintenance issues or communicating issues to your Building Services Contractor
• Clean kitchens, cafeterias and break rooms
• Clean and prepare conference rooms before and after meetings
• Detail clean and keep up when important visitors are in the building
• Continuous touch ups where needed
• Fast response to spills, hazards and any cleaning emergencies
• Litter removal in and around your facility

What other duties or tasks would make someone indispensable around your facility?

A Successful Day Porter Requires The Right Person

The Day Porter is a highly specialized position that really requires a special kind of person in order to deliver the best building cleaning for you and your facility. Any one interested in the position and day porter duties should enjoy variety, be able to take instruction, have the ability to prioritize their work and have a positive attitude. In order to get premier building maintenance from your day porter, the individual filling the position should be competent, self directed and eager to help. Find the right individual through a professional and effective janitorial company and you can get a level of service you might not have thought possible. Of course, in order to get the best janitorial services, the company you contract with must hit a number of benchmarks that assure effective service. Very good people are just one very important component of this.

Day Porter Duties Can Pile Up So Prioritizing Is Critical

Coffee rings collecting in your reception area, greasy finger prints on your entry door, an overfilled trash can in the reception area, and a stinky fridge in the break room. These are just some of the tasks a Day Porter can attend to in order to deliver premier building maintenance in your facility. But because your day porter is so useful, you will have to make certain they are not overwhelmed by too many requests from too many people. In order to get the best janitorial services from your day porter, you may have to help them manage their workload by prioritizing requests or even having special requests come through you or another point person first. Additionally, it is important to make clear to your day porter what their daytime cleaning responsibilities are or you may find yourself in a situation where your day porter is offloading a number of responsibilities to the nighttime cleaning staff as they are overwhelmed with requests for special or additional things.

The Best Janitorial Services Companies Offer Day Porter Services

The best janitorial companies offer this customized service to help you get exactly the services you really need. With a day porter program, you can assure your facility looks clean and presentable between regularly scheduled janitorial services. A day porter can assure you make a positive first impression with every single person who enters your building. Similarly, a day porter can boost employee morale and even employee productivity by reducing clutter and keeping your building in ready to work condition. Likewise, in addressing touch points and hotspots, areas where germs multiple and transmit, your day porter can do their part in reducing the spread of colds and flus that can chip away at productivity and significantly increase absenteeism.

At Stathakis, we will work hard to find just the right day porter capable of working with your unique needs in mind. We are proud to offer one of the most comprehensive and successful Day Porter programs with our great day porters working in facilities across southeastern Michigan. Whether you are in search of Day Porter Services, premier building maintenance, painting, floor cleaning and more, let us help you get your building cleaning better than ever and relieve some of your pain points so you can focus on your core business.

Exactly What Is A Day Porter?

Do you know what a Day Porter does? If not, don’t worry, many Facility Managers aren’t entirely sure either. A Day Porter isn’t the same as a day cleaning service, but it does include day cleaning in part. Add to the confusion that a Day Porter is a highly customized position so what a Day Porter can do to help you in your facility may look very different from what the Day Porter duties look like in another building. Essentially, a Day Porter helps clean areas of your building that need attention throughout the day while picking up extra tasks that help your building look better and run smoother. Your Day Porter can help make sure your entry doors are always sparkling, your reception area never becomes a holding area for abandoned, half empty coffee cups and your restrooms are never without important supplies and frequently emptied trash cans. With a solid Day Porter service, you never have to wait out the nighttime cleaning crew again for issues that are important right now. Essentially, day porter services are designed to help you and your facility with basic janitorial needs during normal daytime business hours and other related tasks that keep your building running smoothly.

Can Day Porter Services Help Your Facility Shine?

Because Day Porter services are so customized, they can really help your facility shine. Often very good Day Porters, while primarily managed by your Building Services Company, become an extension of your own staff. That is without all of the many things involved in having an employee. They can also become a valuable intermediary between you and your evening cleaning service. Likewise, it can be so helpful to get your building’s needs addressed immediately and in person rather than try to communicate a specific or special need to a night time cleaning service you never or rarely see face to face.

The #1 Thing You Need for Effective Day Porter Services?

The single most important element in the success of your Day Porter program is the individual your building services company places in your facility. In part, this is because it is a service position and in part because it is a highly personalized and even specialized position. In order to get the most from YOUR day porter, they must be a good fit for the position and a natural fit in your facility. An effective day Porter program is directly linked to the amount of time and care your janitorial company puts it into finding the right individual for your specific needs. This not only means finding a good fit overall, but also your commercial cleaning company must do all of the standard due diligence including criminal background checks and drug testing. If you are thinking about adding a Day Porter program to your current roster of services, you should ask what your janitorial services company does to assure their people are screened, trained and managed to assure the highest level of success in your facility.

Doling Out Dayporter Duties

Day Porter programs offer a way to get a high level of personalized help in your facility; however, there are some common problems that can keep you from getting the most from your day porter. First, because a Day Porter has a variety of duties, it is critical that you help them prioritize their workload and requests. Frequently, many people in your facility will make requests of your Day Porter, it is easy for a day porter to become overwhelmed with duties and not know which ones are a priority and which they should reroute through you or a supervisor. Ideally, requests for help should come through you or a point person who can approve any work that will take your Day Porter away from their everyday responsibilities. Likewise, if your Day Porter has a huge and growing workload, it is normal that they would focus on those duties they enjoy most so having help prioritizing work and managing outside requests for help can help your day porter focus on the things YOU need most and be effective and successful in their position.

Making Day Cleaning & Nighttime Cleaning Work In Concert

In order to avoid issues between the day cleaning and night cleaning teams, you need to be aware of some common issues. A problem that can arise with even the most professional and effective day porter programs is responsibility shifting between the day porter and the nighttime cleaning people. Day Porters, especially very good day porters, get busy during their work day with a growing list of responsibilities. Often they will begin to shift some of their cleaning responsibilities to the evening cleaning team. Likewise, rather than communicate your needs to the night cleaning crew, sometimes they get in the position of trying to manage the evening cleaning team which is more likely to create tension than respond to your specific needs. You can head off these common challenges by being very clear about your Day Porter’s duties and your expectations, and again, managing the extra requests for help that can leave your Day Porter with more work than time. Ultimately, if there are issues with or between your Day Porter and nighttime cleaning crew, it is your janitorial company’s problem to fix. After all, that is one of the major benefits of outsourcing your commercial cleaning.

Make Over Your Facility Maintenance With the Help of A Day Porter

A Day Porter Program can become an essential part of maintaining your facility at the highest levels, around the clock. The extra help can not only help you facility run smoother, it can help you focus on your business by having a go to person to respond in real time to issues that may arise. When you utilize the services of a professional, reputable Detroit area commercial cleaning company, you can create a lasting partnership that serves you and your facility well. Whether it’s unobtrusively working in heavy traffic areas to keep busy areas of your building spotless, or replenishing paper supplies in the restrooms, or even running packages upstairs or helping a person move offices, your Day Porter can be an amazing asset in helping you keep your building looking good and staying on course. For more information on Day Porters and whether one might be right for your facility, please contact us for a free, no obligation consultation.

Does Your Facility Need Day Porter Services?

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.

What Does A Day Porter Do?

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:

• Lobby maintenance
• Monitoring and servicing restrooms
• Restroom Restocking
• Keeping reception and patio areas clean
• Keep all common areas clean
• Maintaining & refreshing common areas like kitchens, lunchrooms & patios
• Removing trash and debris
• Clear litter and debris from entryways and parking lots
• Clean and ready conference rooms before and after meetings
• Meeting setup/tear down
• Respond to spills and other urgent cleaning requirements
• Place and then remove any necessary safety signage
• Execute minor maintenance tasks light changing a light bulb
• Arranging and scheduling other maintenance tasks with your building services contractor
• Superintendent coverage

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.

Making A Day Porter Work For Your Facility

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.

Your Dayporter Must Be A Good Fit

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.

Setting The Stage For A Win With Day Cleaning & Your Day Porter

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.

Can We Help?

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.

Understanding What Day Porter Services Are & How They Might Work For You

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.

Your Day Porter’s Duties Depend On You

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:

• Keep all common areas clean
• Keeping lobby, reception and patio areas clean
• Keep restrooms clean and restocking supplies and emptying trashes as needed
• Tidy and prep cafeteria, kitchens and/or break rooms before and after peak use
• Clean and ready conference rooms before and after meetings
• Execute minor maintenance tasks light changing a light bulb
• Arranging and scheduling other maintenance tasks with your building services contractor
• Respond to spills and other urgent cleaning requirements
• Place and then remove any necessary safety signage
• Clear litter and debris from entryways and parking lots
• Superintendent coverage

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.

Creating a Schedule of Duties With Your Commercial Cleaning Company

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.

A Good Fit Is Critical To Having A Successful 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.

Setting Your Day Porter Up For Success

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.

Open Communication Keeps Everyone On the Same Page

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.

Day Cleaning, After Hours Cleaning Or Both?

More often than not, commercial cleaning companies and their cleaning teams enter your building when the workday has finished. It can certainly be easier to vacuum, empty trashes and clean restrooms when most of the employees and visitors are gone from the building. And yet, some facilities find that they have a need during the workday for cleaning or they are looking for ways to cut costs on electricity or security concerns by moving cleaning services to the day time. There are many reasons to have cleaning staff available during the day. Day time cleaning may not the solution for a building running around the clock, but it is often a logical step for facilities that follow a customary business schedule. There are also good reasons to keep cleaning relegated to after hours. Some Facility Managers have a preference for one and some facilities find they like using both, a Day Porter or day time cleaning crew for keeping up with your needs throughout the workday and an after hours cleaning team to tackle those cleaning tasks not easily completed during work hours.

The Transition to Day Cleaning

If your facility has consistently used an after hours commercial cleaning service, the transition to day cleaning can be challenging. There isn’t one single way to utilize a day cleaning service or day porter and there isn’t just one way to transition. Coordinating services with your building’s occupants presents its own hurdles. Likewise, getting occupants used to new people moving throughout their space during the workday is different. Adn it should be noted that finding office cleaners or a cleaning team that can work effectively during the day, intermingling with your employees requires a different ‘fit’ than nighttime cleaners. Some night cleaners would work equally well among your tenants and others not so much. If you desire to transition to daytime cleaning services or a day porter service, your janitorial services company will have to do the work to assure the cleaner or cleaning team is a good fit for your facility.

 
Can Day Cleaning Cut Energy Costs?

Day cleaning can be the more sustainable alternative because with no one in the building after hours, you are not paying to light your entire facility. While there is typically energy cost savings of on average of 6%, it isn’t often easy to determine exact energy conversion costs. Not only can your building benefit from significant energy cost savings by switching to a day porter or day cleaning team, but often, the level of the perception of the overall quality of your janitorial services goes up. Why is this? In part because with cleaning staff available during the day, there is better communication and responsiveness. No matter how adept your night time janitorial services are about following the cleaning spec, they just cannot respond in real time to requests and needs the way a janitor, custodian or office cleaner who is there when you are can.

How To Make A Day Cleaning Schedule Work For You

Making a day cleaning schedule for you, your facility and your occupants requires a bit of planning and finesse. Ideally, if you have an effective, professional, experience Detroit janitorial services company, they can help you transition smoothly and effectively meet the unique needs in your building or buildings. Transitioning from night cleaning to day cleaning takes more than simply shifting your cleaning crew’s schedules, it takes looking at what cleaning is needed in your facility and when it can best be done to minimize unnecessary interruptions in the workday. Additionally, some cleaning methods are better than others for daytime cleaning and this is a factor your commercial cleaning company should be well aware of. You and you janitorial contractor will have to take into consideration whether there are areas off limits to cleaning staff during certain hours because of noise restrictions and optimal times to clean restrooms so as to disrupt normal building patterns as little as possible. And part of setting your day cleaning up for success is communicating changes to occupants and setting up a consistent schedule that helps your building’s occupants adapt to the daytime cleaning.

Making Daytime Cleaning Work For Your Tenants 

Understanding the flow of your facility can go a along way in optimizing how day cleaning works for you. And when you begin to implement a new program, keep your building’s occupants in the loop with reminders and opportunities for feedback. Quiet vacuums are a must for day cleaning and are remarkably effective at keeping noise down to an acceptable level, but more disruptive tasks can be pushed to times that are least problematic. And with more traffic throughout your building while cleaning is taking place, your janitorial company must be diligent about safety through care with cords and obstacles and consistent use of signage on wet flooring. On that same note, the products your cleaning company uses during day cleaning are even more critical as your employees are around. This means sticking to environmentally safe cleaning products is a must. Some janitorial companies even utilize a daytime shift that ends an hour after business hours thereby saving on energy, making building security easier while also leaving room for noisier, more disruptive tasks at the very end of the day. And it is wise to check in with tenant and cleaners after the implementation of a day cleaning program to see where it is working and where it might not be. This way you can catch issues before they become full blown problems. Day cleaning can be a good alternative for many facilities but it isn’t without its issues. Yet if you work with a professional, reputable, experienced janitorial contractor, you can make day time cleaning work for you.

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover?

While we have all heard the old adage ‘never judge a book by its cover,’ we as humans are hardwired for precisely these kinds of nearly instantaneous judgments. And science tells is that once these ‘first impressions’ are made, they are very difficult to counter, even in the light of new information. And not only do these initial judgments occupy a semi permanent place in our minds, they affect our feelings, how we process new information and our actions. These ideas about perception matter when it comes to the care and cleaning of our facilities.

“Packaging” Matters

For example, say that someone gives you two collector baseball cards. The cards are exactly the same except one is sitting at the bottom of a dirty, bent shoebox and the other is carefully mounted in a Lucite holder nestled in a shiny black box lined with red velvet. Which baseball card is going to be seen as more valuable? Of course, the baseball card with the nicer packaging. Just the packaging is enough to alter one’s value of the card itself, even though the cards are exactly the same. So your business is like the gift, but your facility is the packaging. The overall cleanliness and condition of your facility has a strong impact on how your business is perceived from customers to colleagues to employees.

Poor Commercial Cleaning = Poor Perception of Your Business

Customers can view a poorly maintained building as an indication of your ability to deliver quality and the standards to which you work. Employees likewise often view the condition of the facility as an indicator of the level of performance and standard of quality you expect from them. Of course it seems like when it comes to commercial cleaning, when people do notice something it is far more likely to be something that needs attention or didn’t get done rather than something positive. This is likely to translate into complaints piling up on your desk or unnecessary vacancies. But what does this mean with regard to our janitorial services?

Visual Cues In Your Janitorial Services

Of course, our commercial cleaning companies must still clean for health eradicating those invisible germs that spread disease and increase workplace absenteeism. But these very necessary tasks don’t really get noticed for the very fact that they are invisible. Still, it means your janitorial services company and building services contractor must be aware of the way visual cues impact the perception of the quality of their services and your facility. Of course the starting point to this is does a room look clean? Visual signs of poor maintenance in a bathroom for instance will include an overflowing trash can, dwindling or empty hand washing supplies like soap and hand towels and wetness collecting around sinks. Conversely, well stocked hand washing supplies and oft emptied trash cans heighten a sense that an area is being properly maintained. Also, a restroom checklist indicating the last time the office restroom was cleaned can send occupants a visual cue about ongoing cleaning. Likewise, evidence tells us that good smells correlate to the perception that a space is clean. While we don’t want our cleaning services to mask a dirty bathroom with clean smells, they can add clean smells to a well maintained restroom to heighten the perception of solid maintenance. Similarly, we know that spaces that appear poorly maintained will get even dirtier quicker. Like in a dirty restroom, users are far more likely to litter and far less likely to wash their hands leading the restroom to get dirtier faster.

Should Our Office Cleaners Be Invisible?

And so often our janitorial services are hidden from view. Our office cleaners and maintenance staff are in the background often cleaning at night like invisible fairy godmothers that replace our soiled Wednesdays with fresh new Thursdays like magic. Depending upon the cleaning needs of your building or facility, a day porter service, a specialized day cleaning team, might provide both the round the clock service your busy facility requires as well as a highly visible indication of your commitment to a clean and well maintained facility. When they see office cleaners, day porters and cleaning teams move throughout your building attending to things, customers, visitors and employees get the message that office cleaning and maintenance is a priority.

Managing the Reality AND Perception of Clean With the Right Commercial Cleaning Company

When it comes to facility cleaning, office cleaning, medical cleaning, industrial cleaning, school cleaning and more, perception is reality. So your office cleaners and commercial cleaning companies must understand not only how to clean your facility well, but how to heighten building occupants perception that a facility is being well cared for. Because perception becomes reality with regard to your cleaning and maintenance, you need a janitorial company that understands the implications of the work they do and how to both clean your facility AND use visual cues to indicate your building is well maintained. If your janitorial company isn’t delivering on their promises to you or you feel your facility maintenance is less than optimal, it may be time to reexamine your choices. While it isn’t always EASY to do the work of finding the right commercial cleaning services to partner with, it’s ALWAYS worth it. Finding an effective building services contractor that offers an understanding and willingness to meet your facility needs with solid work, great teams and real value not only keeps your people safe and your building properly maintained, done right it can make your life and workload more manageable.