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How Office Cleaning Can Improve Your Business

You might think that a deep clean every once in a while is a necessary expense, without realising how not having consistent commercial cleaning is affecting your business and staff. Consider how many people spend their full working day in your building, not including visitors, clients, and prospective employees. The cleanliness and organisation is the first thing they see, and can have a huge impact on how you’re viewed.

Keeping your office clean doesn’t just mean that bacteria and germs are prevented from spreading, but has a much wider impact on your business and those who work there. We’ve broken down the business case for bringing in a commercial cleaning company to keep your spaces tidy, diving into the data of why it’s a crucial part of modern businesses.

How Office Cleaning Can Improve Your Business

The Business Case for a Clean Workplace

Fewer Sick Days

Office spaces have surfaces and touchpoints that see a lot of use and traffic on a daily basis, from desks, keyboards, and chairs at stations to door handles, corridors, and shared spaces like bathrooms and cafeterias. This results in bacteria developing and spreading easily and fast, with data from the HSE showing that not only do 1.9 million UK workers suffer from work-related illnesses at any one time, but the average ill-health case causes 19.1 days of absence.

Integrating commercial cleaning services into your business practices helps to reduce the spread of germs and illnesses throughout your staff, resulting in fewer absences and more consistency for each working day.

Improved Productivity

Clean working environments have been directly linked to improved productivity. Research into the effects of overloading employees with messy, cluttered workspaces, combined with screen fatigue, can be extremely overwhelming and difficult to complete quality work. In addition, dirty work environments can produce hygiene concerns, leading to employees not feeling like they’re able to focus on their work with worries around their health.

Keeping spaces regularly cleaned and organised removes these external distractions and stimuli, allowing your staff to be more focused and productive. It can also encourage them to maintain their own spaces to keep themselves motivated and alert to their work and its quality.

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Better Employee Retention and Morale

Employee churn is a huge concern among business owners, and when working spaces are clean and hygienic, it’s an encouraging sign to the workforce that they’re valued. In fact, research has shown that investing in employee health and working conditions resulted directly in stronger retention of talent.

The cost of replacing skilled workers and employees can cost anywhere between 1.5 or 2 times their annual salary, rising to well over 200% for senior or specialist roles. This is why it’s so important to invest in commercial cleaning services to retain your skilled workforce and avoid damaging costs to your business. The positive nature of keeping a working environment clean also instils confidence in your team that their senior leadership cares about their wellbeing, motivating them to deliver quality work.

What Does a Good Office Cleaning Programme Look Like?

An effective commercial office cleaning programme is built on consistent, regular visits rather than occasional deep cleans. The daily cleans should focus on high-use and heavily trafficked areas to maintain cleanliness, hygiene, and quality presentation at all times.

These daily tasks can include:

Vacuuming carpets and entrance areas, as well as sweeping and mopping hard floors like wood and linoleum.
Going through individual rooms and workspaces, emptying bins and replacing liners, and cleaning desks and work surfaces.
Sanitising high-touch points such as door handles, light switches, and handrails.
Cleaning communal kitchens, break areas, meeting rooms and reception areas, and sanitising washrooms and replenishing consumables.
Disinfecting shared equipment including printers, phones, and touch screens.

Particular attention should be paid to communal spaces where germs can spread quickly between employees.

Alongside daily cleaning, businesses should schedule periodic deep cleaning for carpets, upholstery, washrooms, and hard-to-reach areas to maintain long-term cleanliness standards.

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Seasonal Commercial Office Cleaning Considerations

Each season presents its own challenges for keeping workplaces clean, as weather changes can result in mud that gets tracked inside, with the additional issue of windows needing to be shut more. This in turn increases the illnesses that spread throughout the workforce, so there’s plenty to consider for seasons like autumn and winter when it’s considerably colder and a bit more miserable.

Eco cleaning services are not only as effective as less-environmentally friendly products, but the companies taking an eco-conscious approach, caring for buildings, and the broader environment by using safe products and practices want to reduce the negative impacts on the environment and human exposure to harmful cleaning residues.

Increasing Entrance Cleaning

Entrance mats, floors near the entrance, and any welcome desks see the most mud and dirt as people arrive at your workplace, so keeping them clean before it spreads throughout the building is crucial to cutting it off at the pass. This is crucial during wet and snowy seasons.

Prioritising High-Touch Surfaces

High-touch surfaces are already one of the most important pieces of cleaning that is done consistently, but during cold and flu season, it is crucial to avoiding bacteria spreading. Everything from door handles and kitchen appliances, to shared desks and meeting room equipment must be prioritised as they’ll likely see the most use.

Maintaining Washroom Standards

Keeping washrooms clean and well stocked with soap, hand sanitisers, and paper products in hand towels and toilet paper is absolutely essential to keeping hand hygiene observed.

Improving Indoor Air Quality

In winter, dust becomes more noticeable as windows are open less to air out the rooms, while in summer, the pollen count increasing massively affects hayfever sufferers. Regular cleaning of vents, surfaces, and communal areas helps keep indoor environments and spaces free of agitators.

Scheduling Preventative Deep Cleans

A professional deep clean before winter can help businesses prepare for increased workplace use and seasonal health challenges, which good commercial cleaning companies can schedule to reduce your downtime and distractions.

How to Get Started with a Commercial Cleaning Company

Determining how best to start with a commercial cleaning company requires an analysis of your business, the workplace, and the day-to-day needs of it. This means starting by considering:

The size of your premises
Number of employees
Office occupancy levels
High-traffic areas
Industry-specific hygiene requirements
Seasonal cleaning challenges

Office cleaning is as much about supporting your employees health, reducing sickness absence, improving productivity, and contributing to staff satisfaction and retention as it is about appearance.

At NECS, we offer professional commercial cleaning services for businesses and organisations across a wide range of industries all throughout the country. We can analyse your building or workspace to develop a tailored cleaning schedule that fits around your operations and budget.