The Janitorial Service industry was largely considered an afterthought prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, these commercial janitorial services serve a vital role in keeping facilities safe for employees, students, patients, customers, and other types of visitors. In this article, we will discuss expectations surrounding cleaning and disinfecting your facility, and expectations from and for your cleaning team.
1. Cleanliness Now Equates to Safety
Employees, patients, students, and other visitors to your facility will have high expectations surrounding the cleanliness of your facility. A clean facility will now be deemed a safe facility. Unfortunately, the converse will also apply. As such, it will be important to talk with your janitorial service vendor or cleaning team to discuss these higher expectations, AND to have a plan in place to regularly inspect your facility. Reputable commercial cleaning vendors should already have an inspection protocol in place.
2. It Will Take Longer to Clean AND Disinfect Your Facility
Prior to the pandemic, a janitorial service was primarily responsible for cleaning, rather than cleaning AND disinfecting. Cleaning = REMOVING germs, Disinfecting = KILLING germs. Sure, there was some disinfecting that occurred in restrooms and break areas, but little elsewhere. The main reason for the lack of disinfecting has been budget and cost – we will discuss that in a moment.
To properly disinfect, a surface must be cleaned first, and then a disinfectant must “dwell” on the surface for up to 10 minutes to properly kill the germs. This process just takes longer. Our company utilizes electrostatic sprayers to increase the speed of our disinfecting services, but the fact remains, there are now two steps )cleaning and disinfecting0 that are required to keep your building safe.
3. You Will Need to Increase Your Cleaning and Disinfecting Budget
Unfortunately, there is really no way around this. As mentioned previously, it is going to require more work hours from your commercial janitorial service to properly complete their work. For too long, companies have based their custodial services decisions largely on price alone. Unfortunately, there are commercial cleaning services who will take the business at the low price and do just enough work to keep from getting fired. That is simply a recipe for disaster now.
We expect wages for janitorial services workers to increase as their work has more of a perceived risk. In our market area, custodial wages may move as much as $1.00 – $2.00 more per hour. Lastly, as it relates to budgetary considerations, your cleaning team will also see a significant increase in cleaning chemical cost as more, high cost chemicals will be required.
Conclusion
In closing, we wish the very best for you and your organization. Keeping your building clean and safe will be an important consideration for the foreseeable future. Use caution as you are engaged by emerging disinfecting companies. ServiceMaster has been in been in the cleaning business for over 60 years so we know what it takes to make your facility clean and disinfected, using only the best chemicals and equipment.
