5 Ways to Encourage Your Employees to Keep a Cleaner Workplace

Want to keep your commercial cleaning company costs down? The first way to do that is to start the cleaning process internally from the sources of the dirt, mess, and germs themselves – your employees!

Once they get in the habit of this your facility cleaning company can focus on the bigger picture items instead of wasting hours on tedious tasks that your staff should be doing anyway. You might even save so much of their time that you may be able to cut back on how often they are scheduled to clean, which saves you money! Make sure you set the cleaning standard very clearly and it is upheld consistently. Let’s talk about a few ways to establish and enforce cleaning habits in the workplace…

1. Hire a commercial cleaning company... I know what you’re thinking, wait a minute I thought this blog is about saving money on them by using my employees more. It is, but setting a standard is important and cleanliness is important to your staff and customers. Have a facility cleaning company come in to cover the parts of cleaning that employees often miss or should be responsible for and they will learn to appreciate a clean office, in turn, do their part to keep it clean.
2. Stress the importance of cleanliness in the workplace and the impact it has on their health and happiness. You spend about 50% of your waking hours of any working day in the office. This means there is a 50% chance of getting sick from germs you encounter at work. Talking to your employees about making the office’s health a priority by cleaning will spark a surge of participation. Happiness is also a factor here, many people are unhappy and stressed out by clutter, dirt, and mess – meaning that if you allow your office to develop these traits productivity will go down. If you want to keep productivity up and sick day numbers down you need to develop a norm of office cleanliness.
3. Create a written policy that everyone in the office has to sign stating they agree to the expectations set to keep a cleaner office space. Most people probably aren’t cleaning up after themselves because they don’t realize they should be or what the standards are. One individual’s idea of clean is another’s idea of a disaster zone so standards must be written clearly.
4. Schedule Spring and Fall deep cleans! Set a half of day aside in both spring and fall to make a fun day out of cleaning. Purge unneeded paperwork, throw out the Chinese food that’s been sitting in the fridge since before the holidays, wipe down desks, and clean the places that the staff normally doesn’t think twice about. Order the office pizza for lunch as a treat to boost morale and excitement and give a small prize to the “best cleaner”.
5. Use peer pressure. This sounds kind of mean, but it really works! Put a sign up in the kitchen that says “Wash your dirty dishes before you leave – if there are any dishes in the sink at the beginning of the day they will be thrown away”. The employees will get on board and enforce it and now the standard is set. Make a joke out of it by giving someone paper coffee cups for Christmas if they are notorious for leaving their used mugs sitting around for weeks.