Keeping an office environment clean and hygienic should be a critical priority for every business that values professionalism, employee health and productivity, and positive customer experiences. Effectively cleaning your office space across all surfaces while also disinfecting high-touch areas requires following a thorough cleaning schedule and checklist.
Developing a comprehensive commercial office cleaning checklist that covers all office areas, and then hiring a professional commercial cleaning company to handle intensive cleaning and disinfection duties consistently, is key. This article provides helpful guidance for business owners and office managers seeking reliable commercial office cleaning services able to meet high-quality standards of cleaning and disinfection.
Assess Cleaning Needs by Location and Task
The first step in choosing any janitorial service is fully assessing your unique office cleaning needs. Walk through each area of your office space and evaluate what tasks must be done and where to keep it clean. Evaluate and make note of:
Individual Offices and Cubicles
- What type of floors need vacuuming or mopping? Carpets? Hard floors? Mixture?
- What surfaces require regular dusting? Desks, counters, shelving, lamp fixtures? Glass surfaces like framed artwork? Electronics?
- Are office chair wheels staining carpets or matting down traffic areas? Is any gum stuck needing removal?
Common Areas
- What are the cleaning needs in conference rooms, breakrooms, and reception lobbies? Do these high-traffic spaces need deeper cleaning or stain removal (for spills)?
Restrooms/Washrooms
- How many sinks, toilets, and urinals in women’s versus men’s restrooms?
- Will mirrors, faucets, and dispensers need daily sanitizing? How often to fully sanitize all restroom surfaces?
- Who handles replacing paper goods, towels, and toilet paper? Deodorizing? Trash?
Windows and Doors
- How often do interior office and exterior entrance doors need wiping down to prevent dirt buildup near handles where hands contact frequently?
- What indoor and outdoor glass surfaces need cleaning? Wiping, polishing? Inside only or outside too? Any second-story or high windows requiring special equipment to reach for window cleaners?
Floors
- Do you have a combination of carpeting, hardwood, tile, laminate, and linoleum surfaces across your office requiring tailored cleaning approaches per floor type?
- What daily tasks like vacuuming high-traffic areas, sweeping, mopping, etc. in each zone?
- Are any rugs needing spot treatment for spills or stains? Does Grout need scrubbing? Polishing needed on hard floors?
- How often is deeper waxing, buffing, and scrubbing warranted to thoroughly clean and restore floor surfaces in high-traffic common areas?
Trash, Recycling, and Break Rooms
- Are daily trash and recycling pickups needed throughout office zones or just centralized removal? Any food waste or regulation containers (think toner, e-waste) needing to be hauled away?
- Ensure eating areas have tabletops fully sanitized daily. Sinks scrubbed. Appliances descaled. Floors mopped. Trash emptied. Perishables removed.
Ongoing and Periodic Cleaning Tasks
Make note of daily, weekly, and monthly tasks needing consistently scheduled ongoing performance plus intermittent or periodic deep cleaning projects. This may include handling seasonal upkeep or overdue cleaning like pressure washing exterior entry spaces, intensive carpet spot treatment, applying fresh floor wax coats throughout the office after years of wear, etc.
Develop a Quality Assurance Program
To uphold standards, develop a cleaner checklist then conduct periodic walkthroughs indicating dates/times and passing verification that scheduled tasks were fully and consistently completed within whatever frequency is required based on traffic and use patterns.
Keep these records should you ever need to validate service quality or fulfill compliance reporting around maintenance, safety standards, etc. Know office cleaning is an ongoing effort requiring vigilance and quality assurance oversight.
Seek Licensed, Insured, and Bonded Office Cleaning Professionals
When evaluating janitorial cleaning providers, only consider companies that are licensed, insured, and bonded to protect your interests while working in your business space. Even general office cleaning introduces risks should anything be damaged or should a cleaning crew member get injured on the premises.
Ask to see current documentation as credentials can lapse. Confirm the cleaning company carries ample commercial general liability insurance, workers’ compensation insurance, umbrella insurance maximums, and surety bonds to cover incidents.
Require added insured certificates proving your interests are covered under their policies should property damage or bodily accidents occur from their direct operations. Vet these enterprise risk protections thoroughly before granting any unknown person access. Reputable office cleaning providers readily have these professional coverages.
Background Screen Potential Office Cleaning Employees
Given janitorial staff often work off-hours with access to confidential information, supplies, and technology, carefully screen everyone granted access. While nobody enjoys questioning people’s integrity, failing to background screen cleaning crews exposes firms to possible theft, vandalism, data compromise, or even workplace violence. Protect sensitive assets by confirming cleaning companies conduct drug tests, nationally fingerprinted criminal history checks, sexually related offense screens, and Social Security traces, and deliver written reports for assurance. Also, verify if random drug screening happens thereafter and if the hiring company is enrolled in E-Verify through the Department of Homeland Security.
Interview Office Cleaning Companies After seeking proposals from various commercial office cleaning vendors, narrow down to several top contenders but before signing any written office cleaning contracts, conduct an in-person interview allowing each company to see your actual office environment’s size and needs. Outline your precise expectations for the SCOPE of cleaning tasks required, overall SCHEDULE needed including days cleaned per week/month, what supplies they PROVIDE, and necessary STAFF to handle the square footage indicated on your custodial requirements checklist.
Discuss any specialized cleaning services like external pressure washing, interior window washing, and periodic carpet shampooing. Get all promises in writing via a detailed commercial cleaning proposal. Then walk through your space indicating unique needs by area like daily trash removal versus weekly dusting versus monthly bathroom deep cleaning expectations. Share any recurring issues your team handles that you need proactively addressed through their specialized office cleaning solutions approach.
Compare Office Cleaning Quotes
Cost often drives outsourcing decisions but balancing office cleanliness budgets based purely on bottom dollar rates often backfires long-term. An extremely low bid signals underinvestment in training, equipment, staffing, or cleaning solutions. Reputable companies educate cleaning crews in modern disinfecting approaches and supply commercial-grade cleaning equipment and environmentally preferable cleaning supplies to protect health along with specialized tools like auto-scrubbers for hard floor surface maintenance.
Ensure proposals outline exactly which tasks are handled, frequency completed, staffing plans, quality verification methods, reporting standards, as well as green cleaning products used plus billing rates tied directly to scope deliverables. Vet these details carefully while comparing vendors. Sometimes slightly higher investment brings better-trained office cleaners armed with the capacity to uphold consistent quality standards that support workplace productivity and safety. Confirm what is included along with costs.
Assess Cleaning Supplies, Equipment, and Safety
During interviews, discuss what commercial cleaning solutions and professional equipment the cleaning crews utilize. Many custodial companies today focus on “green” environmentally friendly cleaners certified by Green Seal or UL ECOLOGO to support healthy indoor office air quality given janitorial staff works closely with potent solutions. Seek Green Seal certification.
Review if they supply all their commercial cleaning tools (no using your supplies). Do they use microfiber cloths, HEPA-filtered vacuums, or battery-powered auto-scrubbers for floor buffing? What chemicals handle sanitizing versus disinfecting restroom surfaces versus degreasing kitchen areas? Ensure gear aligns to surfaces cleaned and crew members wear personal protective equipment like gloves, masks, and safety goggles to prevent contact injuries from exposure to cleaning agents used.
Verify Availability, Coverage Plans, and Backup Support
Consistency remains imperative when outsourcing office cleaning tasks. Confirm what days and work hours the cleaning crew is available to service your office spaces based on operational hours. Most clean office spaces overnight after closure or early mornings before staff arrives but understand scheduling allowances or restrictions.
Also, probe policies if a team member calls in sick. Quality companies staff enough office cleaners to easily shift coverage internally whereas understaffed services may fail to send replacements resulting in incomplete cleaning due to gaps that breed germs and dirt in high-traffic zones. Get guarantees around backup staffing coverage written into service contracts for assurance.
Demand Office Cleaning Checklists and Evaluate Sample Reports
Every professional office cleaning company should utilize cleaner checklists outlining duties by workflow planned. This allows quality assurance managers insights into what gets completed when and by whom.
Such reports often provide verification of which tasks individual staff members handle across which facility areas are confirmed via clock-in/out timesheets. Sample checklists also prove helpful for refining your custodial requirements upfront while enabling performance checks against promises later.
Evaluate Eco-Friendly “Green” Cleaning Practices
Many organizations today aim to uphold more eco-friendly operations standards which also extends to cleaning protocols. Seek janitorial services actively using greener commercial cleaning solutions to help protect waterways, and reduce waste, while supporting healthier indoor office environments. Ask each about green commitments and the use of approved products certified under Green Seal or UL ECOLOGO validation standards.
Also discuss any use of microfiber cloths, HEPA vacuums, battery-powered floor equipment, emptying recycling bins, and modern disinfecting approaches focusing on high touch wipe downs versus broad toxic spraying methods. Responsible cleaning today balances efficacy, cost savings, and sustainability.
Deep Cleaning Beyond Routine Janitorial Tasks
Standard office cleaning typically involves daily, weekly, and monthly checklists outlining vacuuming, mopping, sanitizing, trash removal, and dusting key zones. However, periodically more intensive scrubbing, detergent use, stain removal, scrubbing, and disinfecting become necessary after years of heavy use. Discuss periodic scheduling of deeper cleaning tasks like intensive carpet spot removal, tile grout power washing, air duct cleaning, full interior window washing, pressure exterior surface spray downs outside entryways, or company signage.
Evaluate Added Value Services
Some office cleaning companies differentiate themselves by specializing in unique supplementary offerings beyond standard janitorial tasks. For example, expanded amenities can include handyman repairs like fixing stuck locks, squeaky door hinges, replacing damaged ceiling tiles, exchanging light bulbs, adjust leaky sink handles under a fixed cost “handyman included” monthly agreement to proactively tackle nagging upkeep issues conveniently addressed overnight by trusted cleaning crews versus making separate repair calls.
Other popular add-ons include discounted carpet extraction, trash hauling, recycling set-out services, exterior pressure washing bundles, window blind dusting, wall washing, construction site pre/post cleaning support, etc. Explore any specialties.
Office Cleaning Quality Assurance Practices
Custodial services promising pristine outcomes mean little without protocols ensuring such standards. Discuss how each company verifies consistent cleaning quality.
Do they use multi-point inspections per cleaning session? Conduct periodic walkthroughs together. Compare logged activity to expectations across your cleaner checklist. Require proof like time/date stamped before/after photos from crew smartphones? Mystery shopping? Confirm how they remediate any deficiencies.
Understand exact cleaning expectations around what daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning versus periodic deep cleaning entails along with minimum quality thresholds acceptable before considering work complete. Detail clear metrics and secure commitments in the commercial cleaning contract before outsourcing to any janitorial company.
Why Professional Office Cleaning Matters
Business leaders juggle countless priorities daily but repeatedly cleaning dirty desks, floors, and restrooms shouldn’t demand valuable management time better invested in revenue priorities. Outsourcing these necessary duties to custodial companies with commercial office cleaning expertise allows focusing on core work knowing facilities stay professionally maintained.
Beyond lifting these labor burdens off internal staff, commercial cleaning crews bring methodical protocols, specialized tools, and disinfectants, extensive experience honed across varied business types, attentive personalized service, insurance protections, and expert insights on upholding optimal cleanliness year-round. They shoulder all these facility details so you can get back to business.
Additional Benefits of Hiring an Office Cleaning Crew
Beyond the visible perks of upholding cleanliness for positive customer impressions, reducing germ spread for staff wellness, and making kitchen/restrooms fully usable, other noteworthy but often overlooked benefits stem from choosing an expert third-party cleaning provider for handling all cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting tasks.
This lifts the load off existing personnel and eliminates associated costs around recruiting, hiring, managing, and paying people internally to handle such critical ongoing duties full-time.
commercial office cleaning crew offers:
- Cost Savings – No expenses on cleaning tools, supplies, equipment, uniforms purchased/stocked/replaced
- Risk Management – Liability/workers comp coverage protections if incidents occur
- Burden Relief – Lifts intensive duties off internal staff to focus on core roles
- Accountability – Professional cleaners fully accountable for quality and consistency
- Staffing Flexibility – Shifts cleaning duties off overloaded personnel teams
- Time Savings – No hourly wages spent directly supervising workers internally
- Expanded Resources and Capability – Access to cost-prohibitive machinery only feasible contracted out like industrial auto-scrubbers for large floor areas
By partnering with a reputable office cleaning company with extensive experience across varied industries, business leaders gain peace of mind while enabling employees and visitors to utilize thoroughly clean, sanitized, and disinfected spaces supporting productivity, connectivity, health, and safety daily. Consider outsourcing these crucial yet intensive facility maintenance duties to a dedicated provider.
Office Cleaning Brief Choose a Premium Commercial Cleaning Provider
All office environments need frequent cleaning oversight but avoiding a low-cost, low-performance provider also proves critical. Complex commercial spaces have unique needs requiring right-fit solutions.
Seek premium commercial cleaning services offering bespoke boutique-style cleaning plans tailored specifically per unique office layouts, surface materials, high traffic patterns, hourly usage factors, special events accommodations, and sustainable product preferences.
For elevated cleanliness standards across America’s leading commercial enterprises, Elevated Cleaning leads its niche in delivering consistent award-winning outcomes. As an agile yet scalable boutique commercial cleaning provider, Elevated Cleaning offers unrivaled accountability supported by tech-enabled real-time quality assurance oversight.
With dedicated cleaning staff onsite, Elevated Cleaning handles all carpet cleaning, floor cleaning, cleaning windows, and other duties of an office cleaner to maintain a clean environment. Our range of cleaning services includes meeting all cleaning responsibilities across offices, lobbies, conference rooms, private offices, cubicles, and partitions.
Company leadership remains actively involved on all contracted office properties enabling white glove service fully customized to ever meet expanding needs and high cleanliness benchmarks required by professional cleaning services. Contact Elevated Cleaning today for a consultation on crafting a right-fit office cleaning plan uniquely for your work environment based on our commercial cleaning checklist.
