Tag: office cleaning

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How Clean Is Your Office?

It is time for your meal break where would you normally choose to eat?At your office desk or sitting on the toilet?

I guess most of you would choose to eat at your office desk, wouldn’t you? You may change your mind when you learn that your average toilet seat in offices today has less bacteria on it than your office desk. Arizona University researchers collected swabs from around one hundred offices right across the US and on analysis found there was over 400 times as much bacteria on the office desk as on the average toilet seat. Does your Aberdeen office cleaner clean the office desk properly?

However, I have news for you that computer keyboard that is sitting in front of you right now had on average around 3,300 microbes per square inch. Scroll down using your computer mouse to read the rest of this article and you will around 1750 microbes per square inch. But the telephone – that thing that keeps ringing whenever you are trying to do your work – has 25,000 microbes per square inch.

The Alba Office Cleaning company regularly visits offices across Aberdeen to speak to staff who use a different contract cleaning company and occasionally finds a place where cleaning priorities are not fully worked out.

On one of those visits an office manager was telling me how she regularly has to complain to the office cleaners about the odd paper clip that has been left for days on the floor. Why she did not pick it up herself the first day I still don’t know.

On asking what the cleaners had been instructed to do about cleaning the office desk I was often told not to disturb any papers so staff had everything to hand. With her permission I spread a few clean sheets of paper from her printer on the desk. Tipped her own keyboard upside down and tapped it a few times to remove the crumbs, bits of skin and dirt from between the keys. After speaking about some other cleaning priorities and the stats I quoted above we signed a cleaning contract to provide that office with a regular cleaning contract which included the desk-tops and computer equipment using our own specialist cleaning staff.

I simply ask that when drawing up office cleaning schedules we give more attention to the welfare of office staff to get maximum performance from them.

 

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How do you select the right Contract office cleaning company?

It’s not difficult to locate an contract office cleaning company in Scotland but to be able to find a company who can do the work quickly and effectively requires some actual research. So how do you know what do you look for? If you were interviewing for a new staff member you would draw up a list of questions prior to the interview. Do you do the same when you are looking for an office cleaning contractor?

Here are a few topics to think about that will help you answer these questions.

Do you think the person you are talking to really understands what you are looking for in your office cleaning service contract standards? Have they visited your office and walked around it to see what needs to be done. Did they ask you enough questions to get your opinions of what you need?

Are they flexible? Office environments can be always changing as teams as they expand in size will often move to different locations within a building or even to a different building. This shift of furniture and equipment also makes changes in cleaning requirements and the cleaning service provider should be flexible enough to alter your service agreement.

Are you allowed to give feedback? Don’t forget however that feedback should be more than just a survey form that you fill out each month and never see any changes as a consequence

Quality control inspections.

Quality control is important especially at the beginning of your contract.  You should be sure that the local manager is going to be visiting regularly at the beginning to check on office cleaning standards and ensure that the cleaners standards exceed your own. There should of course also be random checks by cleaning managers throughout the length of the contract. Cleaners should NOT know in advance when these visits are taking place or they may drop standards immediately after one inspection only to pick up again when they know an inspection is due.

Finally do they do have systems in place that will assure you that you will be able to get access to senior managers direct in order to sort out any issues that may come up during the cleaning contract. It is also important to understand how your calls are going to be handled and that you will be confident that your issue will be dealt with promptly and professionally at all times.