Do you have a business? Owning a business is the way to go during this pandemic and for the foreseeable future. While everyone else is struggling to find work you can be making waves trying to earn money from potential customers and clients.
But if you’re going to do this then you need to hire professional cleaners to help you clean your office. This is not a task that most business owners can do on their own. Cleaning is time-consuming aid it takes a lot of skill. You need to know how to make sure an area is cleaned thoroughly whilst also doing it quickly.
Here’s everything you need to know about hiring a professional cleaning company.
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1. Cleaning Takes Time
Running a business is hard work. Even if you have a host of great employees at your disposal you still have a lot of work.
If you’re a startup you’re going to be focused on getting capital and investment and getting yourself established. If you are already established then you’re going to be busy attending meetings and trying to grow.
Cleaning takes time. It can take several hours and you might feel that you have done the job properly after you have put all of your heart and soul into it. You have to be realistic. Even though it costs money, you don’t have this time.
When considering time vs money with cleaning then the money is always the best way forward as the money will more than cover your time.
If you don’t believe this then write yourself a schedule and a rota. Write down all the places you need to clean in your office. From taking out the bins to getting down and dirty behind the fridge in the staff kitchen.
It’s only when you itemize everything like this that you can start to see how much work it’s really going to take to clean your office,
2. Ameutuers Do a Bad Job
Amateur cleaners are not worth hiring. You will pay them a lot of money and they won’t do a very good job. They might do such a bad job that you feel there’s no point in hiring them in the first place.
It’s worth paying the extra money to have someone do a really good job. Before you hire a cleaning company you need to ask some basic questions to make sure that they are on track to do exactly the job you want them to do.
Get the cleaning company or agency you intend to hire at the end of a Skype call or, if it’s safe, then try to arrange a face-to-face meeting with them. Try to get a sense of how the cleaning company will approach the task of cleaning your office.
What Areas of Your Business Will They Clean?
This is crucial. You don’t want to hire a professional cleaning company expecting them to clean all of your business and then they leave some areas uncleaned because they ran out of time or they only clean those areas once a month or once a week.
Some areas of your business offices may need a deep clean. How often will the professional cleaning company carry this out? You also want to know what this will entail and how disruptive it will be.
What Equipment do They Have and How Will They Use It?
You don’t want to hire cleaners or a professional cleaning company that uses archaic equipment or equipment that is going to prolong their job. Make sure they use vacuum cleaners, not sweeps! There are some great models out there for the personal market that could easily be useful in a commercial setting.
Ask them how modern their equipment is and therefore how big and how loud it will be. If your cleaners are cleaning during the day then the last thing you want is a big disruption to your other employees.
Be sure to enquire what happens if their equipment breaks down or they need to replace it? A big company should have a huge office behind them with enough resources to get the relevant replacement equipment shipped out to your office in plenty of time for your cleaners to complete the job.
A smaller firm might not be able to cover the expense of this or they may have to go out and buy new equipment which could take time.
Remember masks which are cleaned regularly should now also form part of their equipment.
How Long Will Their Job Take?
Gauging the timeline is also another really important aspect of hiring a cleaning agency. You want your cleaners to do a good job and sometimes that takes time. But at the same time, you don’t want them to take forever.
Be sure to get a timeline for them and a schedule. Don’t let them be vague about this and try to get a good balance between efficiency and the speed with which they can carry out the job so that it is less disruptive.
You could well suggest that they clean your offices at night when no one is inside them. Another thing you can do is to have your offices cleaned section by section or room by room to cause minimal disruption.
Will They Use the Same Cleaners Every Week or Will They Have Agency Staff?
Do you do confidential work in your offices? Maybe you are a law firm that has sensitive clients? Perhaps you work with victims of domestic violence. You don’t want people that your employees or your clients to feel at threat or alarm.
This can happen if you have seemingly random people walking around the building. A bigger agency is more likely to employ agency staff rather than several trusted staff who return to clean your offices every week.
The latter should be a more preferred option. This is because you and your employee can get to know the individual cleaners and there is more of a relationship between you. If random people are walking in and out of the buildings it’s much easier for an imposter to get in and break confidentiality laws.
Agency cleaners will also need training up again and you will have to repeat instructions at regular intervals about how they actually clean the offices. This in itself can be time-consuming and frustrating.
Having a set of individual cleaners that you could get to know who are managed by an agency can be a much better solution.
3. Cleaners Have Never Been More Important
There has never been a more important time in history to ensure that you have a bunch of cleaners keeping your office in pristine condition, they are our heroes in this crisis.
The pandemic has meant that we all now have to take more care with personal hygiene like washing our hands and cleaning surfaces down. Remember that professional commercial cleaning services are vital to keeping you safe.
You want cleaners to wipe down surfaces regularly, they should also ensure that all door handles and places where people touch are regularly disinfected with an antibacterial wash.
Make sure any cleaners you hire appreciate that this is not business as normal. They must take extra steps to ensure your safety. They must also all wear masks to ensure the safety of employees in the building and must be positioned two meters apart. Social distancing is key.
Employee Safety
You want your employees to feel safe at work then you need to make sure they have full confidence in the cleaning strategy.
If your employees have underlying conditions or they are worried about getting Coronavirus then lax cleaning is a sure way to have them refuse to come into your office. This in itself could be damaging to your office morale if you don’t have remote working put in place.
But it’s not about employees having confidence in your system. If your employees contract Covid-19 then it could spread rapidly. It could lead to most of your office having to self-isolate at home for 2 weeks or longer.
This could cause a problem with your work output if your employees are bed-bound and are unable to connect with the outside world.
Hiring Professional Cleaners Is the Way Foward
Hiring professional cleaners is the way forward when it comes to setting up a business in 2020 and beyond.
There’s never been a more important time to make sure your office is cleaned properly because of the Coronavirus pandemic. This helps secure confidence amongst your employees and makes them more likely to want to come into the office.
Moreover, it means you are well-protected against the virus itself and to stop it from getting into your office or affecting employees in the first place.
If you are interested in hiring professional cleaners then be sure to check out the rest of our site.
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