How to choose the best cleaning company for your office

Keep your office environment clean and safe

Having a clean office environment isn’t just about image, it’s also about efficiency, health, safety and creating a positive working environment. Research has shown that a clean, well maintained office encourages greater staff productivity, not to mention projects a far more professional and appropriate image to existing and would-be customers.

But choosing the right contractor isn’t simply down to the obvious cost and locality criteria. There’s far more to ensuring you get the right firm in place, as a bad choice in cleaning contractor can backfire, with poor quality service, punctuality and inconsistency in the team who maintains your office becoming a regularly occurring problem.

So before you think it’s easy to find and hire an office cleaner, think again! Here are six things you need to take into account before picking up the phone and saying you’re hired:

Understanding Your Needs

Every company has a unique set of needs when hiring a cleaning business and understanding those needs is critical. Any reputable cleaning contractor will immediately assess your requirements based on the type of business you run, the premises at which you operate and the number of staff on site. Based on this information, they should then be able to give you a price that accurately reflects a service with value for money and exemplary standards.

It is also prudent to hire a firm that covers a multitude of services such as window cleaning, specialist hard floor cleaning and even day-to-day maintenance issues to make life far simpler, so that you have one point of contact for all your needs, whatever they may be.

Health & Safety

Don’t forget that health and safety does not only affect the cleaning company, but your staff as well. A reputable cleaning contractor should carry out regular risk assessments as and when necessary, to ensure all of their staff are up-to-date on current health and safety legislation, as well as ensuring all equipment used is fully compliant and serviced at regular intervals.

Integration & Management

If you have an existing cleaning firm in place or you’re looking to hire a cleaning company for the first time, this process can always seem a little daunting, especially in bigger premises that require a large team on site and any interruption to operations could be costly.

Whether you’re looking to improve standards, reduce costs or simply ensure your workplace is a better place to be, you are well advised to hire a firm that offers a dedicated account manager. That way, you always have one point of contact to relay any issues or questions to and have them handled directly in any situation that may arise that causes concern.

Track Record

The cleaning industry is varied and overflowing with choice, especially in busy cities like London. And like any industry, there plenty of good, bad and downright ugly! So choosing a company that comes with a good reputation is paramount. Fortunately, the internet offers several ways to find out what a cleaning company’s track record looks like. So check their reviews out thoroughly online but also ask your point of contact for customer testimonials and also review their existing client portfolio to see if they are a good fit for you and whether they met their customers expectations and standards.

Finally, make sure they have all the necessary credentials in place such as industry accreditations and appropriate insurance cover. If anything looks out of place, then you may need to look elsewhere.

Cleaning Staff

The team of cleaners that are assigned to you will be on the ground at your premises at regular intervals so you need to feel comfortable that they are the right fit for your business and are polite, courteous and punctual – not to mention good at their jobs! As a face for the cleaning contractor you hire, they need to be fully trained in accordance with current legislation, not to mention behave in a way that you deem appropriate and satisfactory to your own standards.

And most important of all, turn up on time!

Punctual & Reliable

Most important of all is to have a cleaning contractor you can count on to be there when they say they will, on your terms. Their daily schedule must fit around yours, so any cleaner who wants to dictate times and arrangements to you may not be the right choice. A good cleaning contractor understands that your timeframe is crucial and that all regular duties carried out makes them virtually invisible to your business, thus causing minimal disruption to business operations. That is key.

The best cleaning companies fit harmoniously into your organisation and the best of the bunch will practically go unnoticed. With a solid and affable account manager in place, they can ensure you are happy and keep you up to date with their cleaning rota and maintain good relations right from day one.

At ECMS, we pride ourselves on maintaining incredibly high standards, based on all the attributes above. So if you’re looking to hire a cleaning business sometime soon, contact us for a no obligation quotation or find out more about our office cleaning services on our website.