Commercial property and facility managers are frequently tasked with maintaining an immaculately clean and safe building. This means relying on a professional cleaning staff who can consistently maintain the status quo of the building’s interior and exterior efficiently. The overarching goal is always to ensure that every square inch of the commercial property is healthy, clean, and safe without disturbing the normal flow of daily operations.
Though it can be challenging to find and retain a high-quality professional custodial staff. Especially, if your focus lies elsewhere in building operations. Thankfully, there are some things facility managers can do to empower their custodial staff and ensure the highest level of professional standards are always maintained. Many of these things help free up your building’s maintenance staff to let them focus on maintaining the building’s critical systems, without having to pull double duty as a custodial staff.
Empowering Productivity For Your Building’s Maintenance Staff
A building cleaning staff’s productivity is always optimized when the cleaning staff is empowered with professional-grade cleaning equipment and cleaning products. Not to mention the training necessary to use them correctly and safely. This multiple-tiered approach requires attention to detail at several levels. It starts with:
A Conducive Work Environment
Ensuring that there is a conducive working environment for your building’s custodial and maintenance staff starts with minding all the important details. This includes things like the correct lighting to avoid eye strain as well as good ventilation for air quality and helping to prevent fatigue.
Professional Cleaning Supplies & Equipment
Making sure that your custodial and maintenance staff have access to truly professional-grade cleaning equipment, and cleaning products will go a long way toward making sure the job is done right the first time. This might call for researching cleaning equipment with ergonomic design as well as investing in high-quality cleaning products. Not only does this optimize the effectiveness of your staff’s cleaning efforts, but it also sends a message to your staff that tells them you are investing in their efforts.
Providing Personal Protection Equipment
Beyond the increased need for PPEs when it comes to preventing the spread of COVID and other potential diseases, a professional cleaning staff also needs personal protection equipment for dealing with potentially harsh cleaning products and safely operating commercial-grade cleaning equipment.
Thorough Training
Having access to commercial-grade cleaning equipment and cleaning products is just the first step toward maintaining a professionally clean building. Your custodial staff also needs to have the proper training to ensure they know how to use these high-end cleaning products safely and effectively. This will also go a long way toward preventing possibly costly liability issues.
Take Charge Of Safety
Beyond comprehensive training, facility managers also need to go the extra mile to ensure that the work area is safe for their custodial staff, employees, and guests. This means providing the custodial staff with unfettered access to the work area, and that the building is free of the distractions and dangers of avoidable hazards.
Establish A Thoughtful Maintenance Schedule
Making sure that every member of your staff knows what needs to be done and when it needs to be done by will help prevent inefficiencies. It also ensures that everyone understands their responsibilities on a given day, or week. It also makes it easy for you to schedule seasoning measures and make sure that there is enough staff on hand for special projects or last-second repairs.
In many of these cases, facility managers can minimize scheduling issues by using a computerized maintenance management system to organize and coordinate work. This also gives you the ability to notify every member of your custodial or maintenance staff in advance of any upcoming projects. It also makes it very easy to track and update maintenance schedules via an enabled mobile device.
Ensuring Safety Regulation Compliance Standards
Commercial properties are held to a high standard when it comes to compliance and safety regulations. Implementing measures to help you closely oversee your maintenance and custodial teams through effective scheduling practices helps ensure that all safety compliance standards are being met. It also imbues the building’s staff with a sense of confidence that they know what needs to be done, and that they are not being asked to do more than might be possible at any given time.
Standardized Routine Processes
Commercial properties and places of public accommodation operate smoothly when the staff is well-organized and effectively managed. By implementing standardized routines it reduces stress and potential disorganization, which can lead to unnecessary mistakes. It will also go a long way toward ensuring that the building’s staff doesn’t become disenfranchised by mismanagement.
Standardized routine processes that are put in place and kept in place help your maintenance staff to know what tasks need to be completed each day. It also saves time as team members aren’t left waiting for instructions.
Updated & Continuing Training
Even when a professional cleaning staff has access to all the best tools and equipment, there is still a need for training updates and continued training opportunities. This is especially important if you are going to be bringing in a new piece of equipment or if you are expanding your personnel with new hires.
Routine training exercises and spot-checking ensure that every member of your maintenance and custodial staff understands exactly how to make the most out of the resources available to them. It also ensures that they know how to safely use cleaning equipment and professional-grade cleaning products. This sort of “on-the-job training” is often the ideal way for cleaning staff members to learn how to handle specific chemicals. It also ensures that they are familiar with the facility’s expected standards. If there is a problem, or something is mishandled, providing your staff with training opportunities can also reduce liability concerns.
Establish Standard Operating Procedures
SOPs or “Standard Operating Procedures offer your maintenance and custodial staff with the necessary resources to streamline the cleaning process. When drafting SOPs make sure that each one contains all the instructions and steps required for executing routine tasks. This is especially helpful for outlining procedures for dealing with hazards and/or using any tools and chemicals that pose a safety risk.
Professionally prepared SOPs need to be structured, and practical, while also being easy to update. They also need to be easily accessible to all personnel. This might include creating digital SOPs as well as keeping paper records in file cabinets or laminated close to critical workstations.
