Keeping your business establishment clean is not only a matter of complying with health standards. It’s also imperative to the productivity and motivation of your employees. After all, the average person will have a hard time staying efficient if they are working in a dirty, disorganized workplace.
However, keeping your establishment clean can be laborious, time-consuming, and add a significant amount to your overhead expenses. That said, we’ve come up with some of the best practical ways on how your small business can cut down cleaning costs—without compromising the cleanliness of your workplace:
1. Hire cleaning services sparingly
If you’re trying to save money on cleaning, you probably don’t want to hire every type of cleaning service unless it is essential. With that in mind, hire cleaning services sparingly—or, in other words, hire only the services that you absolutely need.
For instance, if you don’t have the staff or equipment to clean your windows effectively, hire commercial window cleaning services instead. Or if, say, you can’t seem to get that nasty odour out of your office bathrooms, it may be time to hire a professional to get to the bottom of the problem.
Whatever the case may be, here are several tips to keep in mind when in the market for a cleaning service:
- Consider the costs, but don’t use it as your main deciding factor.
- Hire a company with a good reputation; if you’re paying for a cleaning service, it should be worth every penny.
- If you need more than one thing cleaned, find a company that can cover all the services you need and ask for a discount.
2. Address the habits that make your workplace dirty
Every workplace is always going to be dirty at the end of the day. However, there is no need for yours to be exceedingly unclean to the point that your maintenance staff is not paid enough to clean up. If your workplace is consistently too dirty, it is high time to make some changes.
Start with your employees’ habits. Here are some of the things that you may want to change to prevent your workplace from getting too dirty every day:
- Ban eating in authorized places. If people like to eat at their desks, in the lounge, or anywhere else that they shouldn’t be eating, consider imposing a rule that only allows employees to eat in the pantry or the break room. Aside from preventing food residue from ending up all over the place, this rule encourages people to eat in a more relaxed setting, which is good for their work-life balance.
- Place doormats in all entrances. People track in dirt and all sorts of bacteria inside the workplace via their shoes. Placing disinfectant mats can reduce the number of germs that end up inside your premises, especially if you have a lot of employees.
- Encourage everyone to keep their workstations clean. It’s not your employees’ job to clean the office, but they should do their part in keeping their own workstations clean. Encourage everyone to organize their desks, dispose of their trash properly, and avoid storing food in their workstations to help keep the workplace clean.
3. Buy cleaning supplies in bulk
Buying in bulk may cost more upfront, but it can save you more money in the long run. For instance, if one bottle of disinfectant costs $10 retail, you can save hundreds of dollars each year if you opt to buy it in bulk for $8 a piece.
Moreover, buying in bulk also means it is unlikely that you will run out of cleaning supplies throughout the year. Running a workplace can often be rattling, and if your small business has no one to stay on top of the inventory of cleaning supplies, you may find yourself having not enough to last you until the next delivery.
4. Aim to save money on cleaning equipment
Mops, sponges, vacuum cleaners, squeegees—it is imperative that you have at least the bare minimum amount of each type of cleaning equipment. However, avoid spending money on “wonder” cleaning tools that don’t do a better job than regular ones. Similarly, don’t buy more than you need, especially if you hire someone else to clean the workplace anyway.
Keeping the workplace clean is another major task on top of all the other things you need to do to keep your small business running. However, it doesn’t have to be a high additional cost to your overhead expenses as well. With these strategies in place, not only can you maintain the cleanliness of your workplace more efficiently—but you can also trim down your cleaning costs in the process.
