If you have a weekly or monthly office cleaner, you may think the job is done and you can just leave it until their next visit. Whilst you have a professional who will come in and ensure everything is clean and hygienic, that’s only for a day, or maybe four a month, and dirt, grime and rubbish will still build up when your cleaner isn’t there.
Without having your own internal approach and checklist to ensuring everything is clean and tidy in your office, and communicating your expectations to staff, it can lead to your office being an unpleasant place to work. Your office may start to smell bad, as well as kicking off allergies and illnesses, leading to coughing and sneezing.
The trouble is that often an “if you see it, clean it” approach doesn’t always work; employees will often turn a blind eye to dirt, even – or especially – when they’ve caused it themselves by spilling coffee.
This is why it’s essential to have an office cleaning schedule, to share responsibility in making your office a clean place to work.
Why you should have a shared office cleaning schedule
It’s easy enough to think “I’m paying a cleaner money, so they’ll handle it”, but when the cleaner only comes on a Thursday evening, or even worse, once a month, your office can fall into a state of disrepair.
It’s likely that if you only have a fairly irregular office cleaner rather than a daily office cleaner, your office isn’t very big. You still don’t want to let dirt build up, so here’s why a shared cleaning schedule is essential:
Hygiene
Germs don’t die on their own! Leaving spillages and dirty carpets throughout the week or month, can cause bacteria to build up, making your workplace unhygienic and increasing the risk of illness.
Morale and focus
An office that has funky smells from spillages, and rubbish piling up can lower morale and focus for your employees, as they’ll be easily distracted and won’t want to spend the energy working to their full potential.
Proactivity beats reactivity
By leaving an untidy and unclean office until your cleaner next comes along, the damage is already done. Spillages can stain surfaces, and the smell of dirt and grime rubbed in the carpet could lead to you needing to spend out on a full carpet clean. Which is why it’s better to clean things right away.
Setting clear expectations
You set clear expectations for the quality of your employees work, so it’s important to do the same with your office environment. Your employees need to treat your office as if it were their home.
How to create a cleaning schedule
Building an office cleaning schedule that works between professional cleaning needs planning and communication above all.
Put together a list
Before you can schedule staff to conduct interim cleaning outside of days where your cleaner is present, you need to make a list of what needs to be cleaned. Think vacuuming the office floor, taking the bins out, wiping down kitchen counters and emptying the fridge.
Define task frequency
Some tasks may not need to be done every single day, but maybe once every couple of days. For example, you’ll want the kitchen counter tops to be wiped down every single day, whereas vacuuming your office can be done every couple of days. If you’re a client-facing company, we’d recommend cleaning reception areas on a daily basis. When it comes to rubbish and recycling, we’d recommend the bins are taken out every week on a Friday, and the fridge should be emptied every two weeks.
Define roles & responsibilities
What you’ll want to do once you’ve defined frequency of cleaning, is create the schedule and assign tasks to employees. Just put together a simple spreadsheet that puts names against tasks on a weekly basis, so it rotates between everyone. Don’t forget to add yourself to this schedule – your employees won’t be motivated to clean if they think the boss is getting away with any easy ride!
Communicate your office cleaning schedule
It’s very important to communicate your office cleaning schedule to employees, both verbally in an all-hands meeting, and via email. Ensure that when you communicate your new schedule that you let staff know that this isn’t in addition to their job, but can be done first thing when they start work, or last thing before they sign off.
Still struggling to get employees to follow an office cleaning schedule?
Nobody really likes cleaning; we get it. So if you’ve created your office cleaning schedule and are still struggling to get employees to do their bit, you may need daily office cleaning.
At Monthind, we can create a schedule that suits you. Whether you need a cleaning operative that comes in for just a couple of hours a day to clean your public areas and restock washrooms, or need more in-depth daily cleaning, we can help.
Get in touch with Monthind for a free quote.