How to choose an office cleaning company

Keeping your office clean is something of the utmost importance. Not only is it necessary from a health and safety perspective, but your office is also an environment that needs to facilitate a high degree of productivity and focus. 

You want your employees to look forward to coming to work each day, and you need your premises to reflect well on your organisation as a whole. Clearly, getting the right office cleaning company is important – here’s how to find the perfect one for your organisation.

Going over your cleaning needs

Before you start looking for the right cleaning company, you’ll want to carefully assess your cleaning needs. Think about how regularly you’ll likely need the space to be cleaned, whether on a daily basis or just once a month. 

Think about any specialised cleaning skills or equipment that might be required to clean the space as well – not all cleaning providers will be able to clean your carpet or sensitive pieces of tech equipment.

Obviously, you don’t need to know exactly what it is that you need – your cleaning company will be able to provide further advice on things such as how regularly they recommend deep cleans. However, it’s important to have a basic understanding of what you might need, so you know what you’re actually looking for.

Find potential solutions

Once you know what you need help with, you can start your search. Start by asking for recommendations from colleagues and other industry partners – if you can find a cleaning company that you know has a track record of success helping businesses similar to yours, then you’re off to a flying start.

If your direct network doesn’t provide any leads, then a quick online search should provide you with heaps of options. Even at this stage, you can begin to judge their legitimacy through their website. Check for the kinds of businesses they’ve helped clean in the past, and see if there are any legitimate testimonials posted there as well.

Assess their reputation

Once you’ve found some potential options, you’ll need to do some research on their reputation. Even if they’ve come highly recommended, it’s still important that you do your due diligence to ensure that their other customers have had a similar experience.

Take a look at their Google reviews, and ask the company if you can access any customer testimonials anywhere online. If there aren’t any online testimonials or reviews, you should consider this to be a red flag. 

They might not be hiding anything, it’s possible that they’re just getting started out and don’t have any customers yet, but even if this is the case, you don’t necessarily want to go with a business that lacks that kind of experience.

Check what services they provide

Once you’ve found a trusted cleaning company, ask them to go through the different cleaning services that they can provide you with – they need to be a perfect match with your specific cleaning requirements.

It’s possible that you’ll still need to outsource certain aspects of the cleaning process to other companies. For example, cleaning outside window surfaces on a tall office building requires a very specific skill set (such as rope access techniques) that even premium cleaning companies might not have access to.

However, it’s best if you can hit as many birds as possible with one stone. Check how customisable their services are, to see if they’ll be able to cater to specific cleaning needs, such as cleaning monitor screens or other specialist pieces of equipment.

Inquire about their quality assurance procedure

Cleaners are human beings – sometimes, they might forget to clean a room or leave a bathroom cubicle dirty. As a result, it’s important that the company that you choose has a quality assurance procedure in place.

Ask the providers that you’re considering what kind of protocols they have in place to ensure that the office is totally cleaned at the end of the cleaning session. Ask what kind of training they provide their employees, and they check if they use inspectors to ensure that the job is always completed to the highest standard possible.

Pricing

It’s always worth getting quotes from multiple companies before committing to a contract. High-quality cleaning isn’t cheap, but it’s important that the option you go with has a transparent pricing structure and is in line with other industry pricing structures.

Check to see that the company you’re considering going with is offering you a fair price, and make sure that you closely inspect any contracts that you’re about to sign.

 It’s normal that some companies may want you to sign up for a reasonably long time period, but it’s important that you’re aware of any cancellation policies, including penalties for pulling out before the contract has expired.

Insurance

Finally, it’s imperative that the cleaning company that you choose has liability insurance and also understands how to carry-out an office cleaning risk assessment.

Accidents can happen, and lots of offices contain extremely expensive and delicate equipment that can cost a fortune to replace.

Ask the provider you’re considering about their insurance policies surrounding damage and theft, and do some further research into their insurance provider. If possible, ask them for a copy of their insurance certificate, so that you can assess its validity further. 

With large offices and long-term cleaning contracts, issues will no doubt arise – what matters is that you’re left in a solid position to deal with the aftermath of those issues.

Choosing a good long-term office cleaning company can make running your business a whole lot easier. It’s an important decision that you shouldn’t rush into. If you get it wrong, at worst you could end up with significant damage being done to your business’s assets, while at best you’ll have to go through the whole process of finding a cleaning solution again. 

As long as you take care during your search and go through the steps listed above, you should be able to identify a long-term cleaning partner who can help you out for years to come.

For further assistance and for answers to questions you may have relating to choosing an office cleaning company that can work to your specific requirements, do not hesitate to contact our team today on 0161 282 6444.