Effectively Communicating With Your Commercial Cleaner

Commercial cleaning companies can do many things, but they cannot read your mind. That’s why communicating with your commercial cleaner is so important to building a good relationship in which the services provided truly meet your business’s needs.

What kind of information do you need to provide your cleaning crew? You need to spell out any information that could impact the safety of your employees or the cleaners, violate agreements with your customers or the confidentiality of your employees, or that would affect unusual scheduling or uses of your building.

 

Staying Safe

In addition to basics such as the number of people who work in your office and when, Office Pride Commercial Cleaning Services owners say they want to know about anything unusual that may happen in your office during working hours or after hours. But what may seem perfectly normal for your industry or company may seem unusual to someone from the outside. One way to make sure you are covering all the essential information is to walk through the office with the commercial cleaning company owner or representative so they can ask questions.

You should also ask yourself questions such as:

• Does your workplace store any hazardous materials that you need to do your work? Let your cleaners know so they can work safely and avoid any inadvertent mixing of chemicals.
• Does your office contain any machinery or equipment that is expensive, dangerous or easily broken? Do you have any antique or historic items on display that would be irreplaceable? Let your cleaners know to steer clear of it for safety reasons.
• Do you have employees with unusual allergies or sensitivities, such as a person who is allergic to eucalyptus or pine, which might affect what kinds of chemicals or solutions your cleaners use. Or do you have one breakroom where no nuts or seafood are allowed because of employee allergies? Be sure to let the cleaners know, so they can be extra cautious about preventing cross-contamination.

 

Off Limits

Do you have any rooms or areas that are off-limits? Office Pride cleaners are trained to deal with the disposal of sensitive trash, like that generated in a financial institution, and secure/alarmed offices. If one of your work teams is collaborating on a project for a client, for instance, you may wish to have the meeting room where they are working left untouched for days or weeks at a time to protect the project and the client. (You may also want to encourage the team to remove any pizza boxes or donuts before they attract ants!)

But if you have areas that your cleaners truly should not access, you just need to let them know. Some of that may depend on the hours when your cleaners are on the premises.

For example, you may want to tell them that the human resources office contains confidential information and may only be cleaned when the HR team is present. If it’s truly off limits, you will have to decide who will dust, empty the trash cans and perform other cleaning tasks in that area if HR employees leave before the cleaning team arrives. Or you may want to instruct them to clean a lactation room but not before all employees have left for the day to protect the privacy of the moms on your staff.

 

Unrelated Uses

Finally, you need to let the cleaning team know if other groups use your building after hours, and if so, for what purpose. Many small churches start out meeting in local businesses. Your cleaners need to know if a conference room is being used by a church group so they can clean it but be careful not to disturb church functions.

Additionally, support groups, community groups, hobbyists and after-school programs often meet in office or commercial buildings, schools or churches after regular business hours. Give your cleaning team a heads-up so they can make sure the meeting areas are cleaned before and after the outside groups are there. They may also need to plan to do more intensive cleaning projects, like carpet cleaning, on days that the groups are not in your building. Flexibility is a benefit of using Office Pride teams, who can clean your building any day and at any time.

With effective communication and planning, your work teams and other groups using your office space can co-exist in clean and fresh surroundings. To learn more about all of the cleaning services Office Pride offers in your area, please check out our franchise locations and call your nearest franchise location to request a free custom quote for all your cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting needs.