Is your office cleaner your best asset?

Open any book on how to succeed in business and you will find it stuffed with tips on selling, marketing and appraising staff. In fact it is sometimes surprising that businesses which were around over a hundred years ago managed to sell anything at all given their lack of forecasts, reporting methodologies and other data!

Open any book on how to succeed in business and you will find it stuffed with tips on selling, marketing and appraising staff. In fact it is sometimes surprising that businesses which were around over a hundred years ago managed to sell anything at all given their lack of forecasts, reporting methodologies and other data!

One aspect of business life that you won’t find in many business books is the role played by the office cleaner. Often moaned about or at best ignored, the office cleaner can be the final cog in the marketing wheel that energises the workplace and impresses potential customers.

Daily cleaning routines can include emptying bins, cleaning toilet and kitchen areas, polishing reception desks and vacuuming carpets or carpet tiles. Without these tasks your visitors will be presented with an untidy looking office with overflowing bins and a toilet that is best avoided. The subliminal message is one of disorder and lack of care and not only will visitors pick up on this, staff will become demoralised and their work rate will suffer.

Adding in a weekly cleaning routine of window cleaning, deep cleaning on stained carpets and dusting all surfaces, continuously renews your office and keeps it feeling fresh and clean. Various studies have shown that keeping areas clean increases the users respect for those places. Employees will instinctively react to fresh clean offices by dressing more smartly, keeping work areas tidy and with a higher work rate. Visitors too, particularly potential clients will also respond by being more likely to look favourably on your products and services. Interestingly, you will also be able to charge a higher price for your services if your clients experience clean offices than if the office is dirty and smelly.

By including telephone and equipment cleaning into the mix you can also improve hygiene and therefore the health of your employees. Keeping equipment clean can cut down on the amount of germs transmitted within the office and improve on absence records.

Helping both your cleaner and employees to appreciate the importance of the cleaner in company life will reap rewards. Cleaners will no longer be looked down on and complaints about papers being moved or having to tidy desks to accommodate the cleaner will fall dramatically. Keeping a regular dialogue with your cleaner or cleaning company is a vital part of this process. Maybe reports do have a place in modern business practice but so does the cleaner and their worth should not be ignored.