Cleanliness is a hugely important part of running a business. Not only will it be part of law and hygiene inspections in some circumstances, but maintaining hygiene and cleanliness is vital if you want your staff to turn up, be happy, and have customers to keep coming back. But who should do the cleaning?
If you or your staff can’t clean to the standard require then, yes, hire a professional cleaning company. Just make sure that the overheads of running your business mean you can afford this. Otherwise, just train your staff better and provide them with the appropriate equipment to do the job.
Like most situations, making a decision about whether or not you should do something is a little bit more complicated than yes or no. There are lots of things to consider. There are definitely pros and cons to hiring a professional clean company. But what are they?
Benefits of having a clean environment
Firstly, the most important part of this question is to recognise the benefits of having a clean working environment in the first place; aside from any laws that might exist to encourage it.
Having a clean work environment will improve health and wellbeing. Dirt, germs, bacteria, and infections pose a significant health risk to individuals and teams. A work environment that doesn’t take cleaning serious is setting itself up to have a workforce that is off sick.
Having a clean environment, just like having a tidy environment, allows for people to actually be productive and get on with their jobs. Any mess is just going to slow people down and stifle their progress. Hopefully the people you work with want to do their job and contribute to the cause and purpose of your organisation. Even if they don’t, the same objective applies, remove all the objects (physical, mental, and emotion) that stand in someone’s way of being successful.
To clean your house (if you work from home)
What do you do if you work from home? If you can afford to have someone clean your property, and you can find someone who is reliable that you can put your faith in, then go for it, why not!?
Home and the workplace are two of the main places anyone is going to spend their time. So, in many ways, being able to work from home is like dealing with two things at once when it comes to cleaning. You can keep work and home clean at the same time.
But ultimately, work and leisure are both ways of spending your time and energy. You only have so much of it and it’s important to make time for yourself.
So, maybe just get someone to clean your place once or twice a month? The rest of the time you can just deal with the everyday stuff.
To clean your workplace
In this situation, the question is what is your workplace and how big is it?
In many different environments staff will have the responsibility of working and cleaning. It’s all just part of the same job. But, they have to be provided with the proper training and equipment if they are going to do it. Not just because law says so, but because it’s practically a smarter way to manage things.
Cleaning can be time consuming and messy, that’s why when it’s feasible to do so it’s valuable to have a person that is dedicated to the task of cleaning and tidying.
If your work environment is an industrial type space then you almost certainly want to explore getting a professional company in. Because they may have to use specialist equipment that you simply don’t have the space to store on your premises on a day to day basis.
Quite often, the smart course of action is to hire an external cleaning company to come in every once and a while to do the deep clean. Just because it’s their specialism and they have the training, tools, and equipment to do it quicker and better than you. Then all you have to do is maintain the basic day to day cleaning tasks.
Overheads and costs
This is what it always comes down to. Depending on the stage you are at with running the business, it might not be economically viable to pay someone else to do the cleaning at this point. But if you look at forecasts and ways you can save and better spend money then potentially you can hire someone external to clean your premises in the future.
It really comes down to risk vs reward. Is the spend justifiable?
Time spent vs time saved
In terms of justifying spend, you can look at how it impacts on time. Your time, your staff’s time, the time it takes to do a cleaning task, the time it frees you or someone else up to do other things.
If you can save time by paying someone else to clean and make up that cost by generating income somewhere else, then that would be a justifiable spend. Time is your most precious asset. Learn to spend it wisely.
Disadvantages of hiring a cleaning company
Other than the fact you have to pay someone. A disadvantage of hiring a cleaning company is the fact that you have to put your faith in someone else. So, make sure they can clean to the standard you want. Make sure they can deliver on time. Make sure there is a clear arrangement on the cost agreed. Make sure they are insured.
The last thing you want to do is create more problems when what you were trying to do in the first place was actually solve a porblem.
Can you train and hire someone to be a cleaner
YES! A more affordable and viable option may be to simply hire someone to clean or train the staff you have. The biggest issue you may face, as touched on before, will be storage of cleaning equipment and adhering to any and legislation surrounding keeping the workplace clean.
But, you can absolutely hire someone directly or train staff to be able to clean the workspace. In fact, training your staff or hiring someone to do that specific task may be the best option. It’s typically more affordable in the long run; as long as you mange finances and negotiate where necessary. But it also shows your staff that you value them by helping them develop and enhance their skillset.
People may not think cleaning is a valuable skills. But it’s actually a highly complex and important task.
Spreading out the workload (Have a rota)
The alternative to hiring a cleaning company would be doing it yourself or getting members of staff to do it. But if you are going to do that you have to factor it into the daily, weekly, monthly, potentially yearly cycle.
If you want a sure fire way to disturb chemistry it’s getting staff to clean. Some people think it’s beneath them and someone else should do it. Try not to hire these people in the first place. At the very least, identify this attitude and explain in plain terms that this is the expectation when it comes to cleaning. As long as they get on board you can consider training someone to clean.
On top of that, the important thing to remember is that their will always be an undertone of fairness surrounding most tasks. Do your best to ensure an equal delegation of the workload. That is the best way to keep people happy.