How your office looks can impact the employees’ health, morale, and productivity. However, maintaining cleanliness can be an overwhelming work for an office or operations manager.
Thus, it is important that you take a systematic approach when it comes to providing a clean workplace to employees. That way, you can save time and money at making your office look presentable and functional.
In this post, we are going to share seven actionable steps you can do to best clean and manage your office:
Create a Cleaning Maintenance Plan
A cleaning maintenance plan gives you an insight of what to clean on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Depending on the size of the office, you may even include quarterly, semi-annual, and annual cleaning tasks.
Here are some examples:
- Daily Task: Disposing of trash
- Weekly Task: Cleaning window sills
- Monthly Task: Cleaning the HVAC vents
As posted on Unlocked, “Day-to-day cleaning ensures that your office stays neat, tidy and functional, whereas weekly and monthly cleaning focus on larger jobs and surfaces that will keep your office space welcoming and healthy.”
Just keep in mind that after you build your cleaning maintenance plan, you must communicate about it to your employees. That way, you can engage them in this initiative, as well as let them know what to expect and when to expect it.
If you are unsure how to get started with your maintenance plan, Unlocked has a succinct cleaning checklist that you can follow.
Make Cleaning Products Accessible to Everyone
Sure, your office might hire a janitor or two to help clean the office. But that does not mean that you should keep cleaning materials behind a locked door.
For instance, disinfectant sprays and wipes can be kept in drawers or shelves. That way, employees can clean their office desk before or after work. Other than keeping their work area clean, this is also a great way to help reduce the spread of germs and viruses in the offices.
If you have a pantry, employees must know where they can find the sponge and dishwashing paste or liquid. That way, dirty dishes, and mugs will not pile up in the kitchen sink. Otherwise, you are making the office prone to cockroach and rat infestation.
Keep in mind that making cleaning products accessible to everyone helps maintain the cleanliness of the office, as well as making sure that the employees are less susceptible to sickness.
Let Employees Organize Their Desk
The best way to maintain an office’s cleanliness is to provide organization options to employees. That way, you can encourage them to decrease clutter in their workspace.
As posted on Modernistic, “Built-up clutter can make even the cleanest and tidiest environments seem messy even though they are not!”
Keep in mind that a messy workspace can decrease an employee’s productivity. In fact, a Brothers International Corporation survey revealed that 87% of employees feel less productive on a messy desk. That’s because they need to spend at least 30 minutes per week looking for misplaced items.
You can do this by providing desk organizers to employees. This includes folders, file organizer, pen holder, and more.
Doing so will enable them to find what they are looking for easily. It can also help reduce those visual distractions that can take away their focus from the task at hand.
Encourage Employees to Clean Their Workspaces
For some, it is easy for the operations manager to bring the employees on board when it comes to maintaining an office’s cleanliness. Otherwise, cleaning takes a backseat with all the mountains of tasks that they need to do.
If the employees are struggling to incorporate cleanliness in their daily routine, here are some things that you can do:
- Circulate a memo. Make sure that you spell out why it is crucial to maintain the cleanliness of the office, as well as what you expect from them.
- Motivate them with rewards. This will not only encourage them to keep their workspace neat and tidy, but it also helps promote healthy competition between departments or units.
- Have a weekly cleaning roster. Allocating tasks to individual employees ensure that they get involved.
- Go paperless. Reducing your reliance on paper is one way to reduce the clutter in the office.
Designate Waste/Recycling Systems
While the office has a lot of papers, disposable cups, and utensils, not everyone has thought of recycling them.
It can be because they do not know what items in the office can be recycled, and they do not know where to dispose of their waste either. That said, it is essential that you set up recycling bins in the office.
Here are some examples:
- Place recycling bins near printers and photocopiers for paper
- Place containers in the pantry for compostable food waste
- Place recycling boxes in the bathroom for paper towels
- Place a box to collect disposable cups near the water cooler
Keep in mind that an office is one of the contributors of waste in the landfill. Thus, setting up a recycling program is an excellent step to being part of the solution. Not to mention that recycling can help your company save money in disposing of wastes.
Set Standards for Bathroom/Lunchroom Etiquette
An employee’s etiquette says a lot about his or her upbringing. Meanwhile, it also helps maintain the cleanliness in the office.
A simple bathroom etiquette, such as using the flush once you are done, allows every employee to use the toilet with ease. After all, a stinky and unkempt comfort room is a major turn off.
The same thing goes for your office pantry. Clean up after yourselves so that other employees can enjoy their meal without the horrible visual distraction.
Aside from keeping the comfort room and office kitchen clean, doing so can reduce the risk of accidents and transmission of diseases. After all, a dirty and unhygienic place can be a breeding ground for germs and viruses.
Tie Cleanliness to Safety
As mentioned earlier, a dirty and unhygienic place can be a breeding ground for germs and viruses. This can lead to an increase in employees getting infected and sick, thus skyrocketing the absenteeism rate in the office.
To encourage the employees to help maintain the cleanliness of the office, it is a good idea to tie it with their safety and well-being.
Educate them about the importance of cleanliness, as well as the required safety practices in the workplace. That way, they can be active participants in keeping the office clean and safe.
Conclusion
As the adage goes, “Tidy home, tidy mind.” The same thing goes for a workspace.
Having a clean office should be a no-brainer. That’s because it represents who you are as a company.
A clean workplace means that you care about work quality and client satisfaction.
So, regardless of your job title in the office, you should exemplify the value that cleanliness adds to a business.
About the Author – Raymond Chiu is the Director of Operations for Maid Sailors Office, a trusted New York cleaning services provider. Maid Sailors offers its customers unrivaled office cleaning services that can address even the toughest cleaning needs. Matched with affordable prices, Maid Sailors is your best partner in helping you turn your office into a work-friendly workplace.
