How clean is your office? If someone walked in now, would they be bowled over by the cleanliness standards you hold yourself and your employees to, or would they definitely see room for improvement?
The thing is, a clean office is about more than just hygiene. It’s about providing your team with a hygienic place to work, it’s about an environment that creates an efficient working space, and it’s about giving out the right impression to anyone who frequents your office.
Let’s take a look at a few tips to help you stay on top of office cleaning and standards so you’re always working in a space that thrives and encourages productivity and doesn’t detract from it.
Create a Cleaning Schedule
The foundation of a good, clean office is a cleaning schedule that’s manageable and doesn’t take over people’s days.
You need a few rules in place that everyone can work towards, whatever their job role. If people know their responsibilities up front, they can work towards them to help you improve standards.
It doesn’t need to be time-consuming or complicated. Whether you need to cover things like emptying bins, cleaning touchpoints, wiping down high-traffic areas like door handles and light switches, or you need to make sure vacuuming and sweeping are on the list too, create a simple, easy-to-follow list.
This will then be down to your designated cleaning employee or split between your team if they handle aspects of cleaning themselves, or even yourself if you take over this task.
Then create a time these cleaning tasks are completed, i.e., during lunch or before or after the working day, etc. if you’re assigning specific times to jobs that need completing each day, there’s a higher chance they’ll become second nature and get completed automatically.
Assign Specific Areas to Staff
One of the reasons cleanliness gets missed in many offices is through assumptions. The assumption that someone else is doing the cleaning and its not anyone’s responsibility and someone else is dealing with it.
You don’t need to overload your team with cleaning duties; just give the small areas to manage and rules for everyone to follow. This removes any ambiguity and gives responsibilities so nothing gets overlooked. And if it’s not being cleaned, you know exactly who to talk to.
It can also be a good idea to rotate these responsibilities so people don’t become resentful if they feel they got the worst part of the office, i. e. the bathrooms or kitchen, if you are assigning these to employees. Keep it simple, keep it fair, and don’t treat them as a full-service cleaning team.
Keep Desk and Surfaces Clear
One of the fastest ways for an office to look messy is for clutter to pile up on desks and surfaces without being organised and dealt with appropriately.
If you have surfaces that are constantly covered in cups, food wrappers, paperwork, cables, and other miscellaneous items, this isn’t going to look good, nor is it producing a working environment people will be productive in.
You need to encourage a clear desk policy across the entire company and enforce it regularly so bad habits don’t slip. The same rules need to apply to shared surfaces too. Nothing gets left out that should be put away or needs to be in another area, i.e cups or files.
Encourage people to wipe down their own desks at the end of the day to remove any residue from working, eating, or dust that’s settled in the day. The more you reiterate the importance of this, the more likely people will pick up the habit and carry it out as standard.
Have the Right Cleaning Supplies to Hand
If you don’t have the supplies in for people to clean, chances are they simply won’t get them done for you or work around your lack of supplies. Cleaning just won’t be completed.
You need to keep a full stock of cleaning supplies exactly where they need to be. They need to be accessible and ready to go and accounted for at all times.
The easier it is for people to grab cleaning supplies, the more likely they’ll be to deal with small issues as they occur.
At minimum, you need surface sprays, cleaning cloths, and washing-up supplies for a kitchen. You need a bathroom spray, dedicated cleaning tools, mirror spray, and an air freshener. Have a list of all of the supplies and check stock levels regularly so you can restock before anything runs out and you have spares to hand if required for any major messes that need cleaning.
Use a Cleaning Company
A cleaning company is the ideal way to keep standards high within your office. You cannot expect your team to take on the bulk of the cleaning alongside their workload if you don’t want to hire a cleaner. This is the perfect alternative.
You can instruct a commercial office cleaning service to help out with either all cleaning tasks or just specific ones to help you ensure cleanliness is achieved throughout the entire office.
Have Regular Deep Cleans
Regular light surface cleaning is great, but it doesn’t always tackle the bigger issues. You need to schedule periodic deep cleans of all areas of the office. From the seating to the carpets, window cleaning, bathrooms, and kitchens as standard.
Ideally, you want to be scheduling deep cleans every few months to help you eradicate lingering stains, odors, or deep-seated issues that regular cleaning just won’t touch. This is especially important if you have clients entering your office on a regular basis, as leaving this will detract from the impression you’re trying to make when they arrive at your workplace.
Be Consistent
The main trick with all of these tips is consistency. You need to make sure your rules are consistent across all employees and are enforced regularly, too. This means you’ll be able to ensure standards are met across all areas, not just for certain areas or employees.
Regularly review what you’re doing, change what isn’t working, and enforce the rules so no one has the chance to skip out or claim they didn’t know what was expected of them.
