Most businesses have been at the point where they needed to look for ways of reducing their outgoings. Cleaning services tend to get looked at first.
This isn’t as straight forward as one would think, because with cleaning services you tend to get what you pay for. This means that if you cut your budget too much, or do so without understanding the true impact this will have on the cleaning schedule, then you might end up with an unhygienic working environment. This often ends up costlier than the budget you wanted to save in the first place. You might now have staff members calling in sick more often than usual, and your visitors potentially won’t find your premises as professional as expected.
So how can you reduce your costs without compromising the hygiene levels?
STEP 1
CENTRALISED BINS
I often come across office workspaces that have a bin next to each desk as well as inside each meeting room. Although this is no doubt very convenient to most employees, it ends up costing you more than you think.
For example, let's take an average size office of 47 desks with 3 meeting rooms. They chose to have 50 personal bins which will cost them around £1,030.00 + VAT more per annum than if they had 4 larger central bins.
I would say that is a good start, wouldn’t you? 😊
And there is even more good news!
Having fewer bins means that your consumables expenditure will also be reduced (Approx £100.00 + VAT per annum).
Your environmental impact is reduced by using less plastic bags.
Employee wellbeing is improved too! A little exercise goes a long way.
STEP 2
COLLECTING & WASHING DISHES
This one is quite obvious to me: ask your employees to collect and wash their own dishes, or at least place them in the dishwasher.
If we stick to the previous example of 47 desks and each employee leaves one mug on their desk at the end of the day, then the collection of dishes alone will cost your business approximately £700 + VAT per annum.
Loading and unloading one dishwasher per day will cost around £615 + VAT per annum.
In an office without a dishwasher, hand-washing, drying, and putting away 47 dishes will cost you approximately £2,890 + VAT per annum.
That said, we are always MORE THAN HAPPY to collect and wash up your dishes if that is what you require.
STEP 3
REMOVING OR REDUCING TASKS AND AREAS FROM THE CLEANING SCHEDULE
Businesses often don’t use all areas on their premises daily, so you can save a significant amount of money by ensuring such sections get cleaned only on the days in which they are used.
You might also decide to have your hard floors vacuumed daily but mopped only 3 times a week.
The tricky bit is understanding the true costs of cleaning each part of your premises.
This is why we proudly use THAF.
It is a pricing software based on accurately measured Time & Motion Studies that have been validated on over 1,000 venues. The system allows our customers to have full control over their cleaning budget by knowing the cost of each cleaning task, and by choosing how frequently they get done.
Make sure your cleaning contractor is THAF accredited.
