With the COVID-19 crisis ongoing, it has resulted in changes to various aspects of Singaporeans’ lives. The two most obvious changes are cleanliness and hygiene. If you have worked in an office building in Singapore before, you would have probably engaged a local office cleaning service before with trained cleaners. Every company or business building needs a strict regime of upkeep and maintenance.
With stricter rules and regulations on hygiene, it is advisable to implement a procedure that is followed closely to ensure standards are met in office buildings. In fact, many times office managers or business owners are not aware of the expectations from their cleaning services providers. Without setting guidelines and procedures, it is difficult to fully insure a clean workplace.
Hence, we will give a rundown of the guidelines for the best cleaning practices and procedures in Singapore to help you ensure the quality of cleaning service your company deserves.
Perks of Establishing Good Cleaning Standards in the Office
#1. First Impressions Count
By having a pristine and neat work environment, it helps create a more appealing and welcoming appearance for guests and/or potential clients. This instills confidence and leaves them with a good impression that the company is efficient and pays extra attention to details. From lobbies, offices, open office spaces, conference rooms to clean floors and pantry areas. Maintaining an office that really shines tells your potential clients and/or guests that you have the required experience and professionalism to look after your staff and also a new client.
#2. Keeping Your Workplace Clean and Tidy
Firstly, try not to task your employees with cleaning duty so they can use their time wisely for their own work. Instead, invest in a professional office cleaning service company. Doing so ensures your office is spotless as they literally work on cleaning every open area of your workspace, whether it’s cleaning floors and carpets, walls, windows, bathrooms, hallways, lobbies and even outside the building. It can either be a one-time deal or a regular basis use.
#3. Elevate Your Brand
Usually, when a potential client walks into your office, they would judge your entire brand based on how your office space looks and feels, including any products and services you might be offering. A tidy work environment implies superior, quality products and services. Hence, do not let a messy work environment result in potential clients seeing your company brand in a negative light.
#4. Happier Employees
Many employees spend a considerable amount of hours at their workplace, this is why they regard it as a second home. As such, you need to focus your effort on keeping the workplace as clean, safe and neat as possible. By keeping the workplace well-maintained, you are allowing your employees to be in a healthy environment for productiveness, efficiency and most importantly, happiness.
#5. Better Air Quality
Air quality is one other aspect with significant influence on your employees’ health and performance. There are 100 times more airborne pollutants indoors than there is outdoors, which makes ensuring high office cleaning standards more important and necessary.
According to research, it was discovered that poor air quality has a part to play in decreased workplace productivity and satisfaction among staff. In fact, the overall impact showed that the impact on the majority of work performance is estimatedly 6-9%.
Common sources of air pollutants at work include:
- Dust
- Bacteria
- Fungi and Mould
- Improperly maintained heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems
A properly organised cleaning schedule is extremely important, especially in this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It outlines and ensures the specific work and responsibiliity that needs to be done and also gives a clear procedure to be followed.
A clean and sanitised workplace represents a high level of professionalism and tells potential clients that you care about your brand, hygiene and employees. A happy employee is a productive employee and with that, it leaves a great impression on clients. By keeping your work environment clean, you are ensuring that your employees are healthy and productive and ready to answer and serve clients’ needs and/or enquires whenever needed.
How to Ensure High Cleaning Standards for Your Office
Procedure Guideline
The National Environment Agency has established official guidelines for the cleaning industry to raise standards, productivity and professionalism. We have followed the National Environment Agency closely to create an accurate and precise procedure guideline. With these guidelines, you can be assured that your office will be in tip-top condition. The service provider gains a greater clarity on the methods of cleaning procedures and use of equipment, as well as safety measures, enabling them to be organised and deliver high cleaning standard services or your office.
Determining the Workload
Before getting in touch with the office cleaner of your choice – you have to clarify a few questions to ensure your office is in good hands. Once you have cleared up the questions, the cleaning service provider will ensure your office is kept spick and span regularly.
Afterwards, communicate all the information to allow the cleaning company of your choice to do up an accurate proposal. In addition, this would help the cleaning service provider in planning and convey the deployment of manpower needed for the respective cleaning services. The different type of workload includes:
#1. Service Hours
Indicate the service hours for the cleaning service for both peak and off-peak periods.
#2. Schedule of Work
Schedule your work for better management of resources.
#3. Deployment Proposal
Draft a deployment proposal to help the service provider accurately plan and submit their deployment proposal using the content given. Let them know your related requirements of the number of cleaners, their tasks and by what date and etc.
#4. Area of Coverage
Include information regarding the total sum and fixtures within the inspection units and the list of inspection units. This includes the material of the floor surfaces and floor space which requires cleaning using a floor plan/lay out drawing of the total premise.
#5. Other Services
Aside from cleaning services, if other types of services are needed, include these in the contract. Other services include pest management and waste management.
#6. Reporting the process of any faults
Do a fault reporting procedure and include user feedback channels to make sure that every fault reported is addressed promptly. Such faults can include leaked air-con, signs of spillage, damage of equipment (vacuum), etc.
#7. Pandemic Event
Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, it has instilled a stricter environment. Therefore, service buyers have to come to an agreement on a suitable deployment plan together with the cleaners to execute and accomplish the work as stated in the contract. The content written in the contract must be followed.
Service Standard Inspection
Service standard inspection ensures that you become more efficient. You can’t only point out defects (if there are), but you also correct any potential issues before they arise. It can also be used to measure the cleaning company’s ability to fulfil the performance requirements set by the cleaning services company. Your service standard inspection can include:
#1. Pre-inspection Checklist
List down inspection unit space such as entry door, lift lobby, corridor, meeting rooms, pantry area, etc. Pre-inspections should rate the space’s cleanliness against each item’s reference rating in the inspection units before cleaning to review their effectiveness later on.
#2. Performance Ratings
Review and give ratings for each inspection and relay the information to the cleaning company for performance review based on the productivity, effectiveness and duration. This is done as a measure so that the cleaner can use the performance ratings as solutions to improve their work.
#3. Inspection and Response Times
Perform inspections at once following the cleaning routine is done. Next, find out the service provider’s response time when addressing ad-hoc requests both during and after service hours. It is possible to be categorised according to work priority from a range of critical to non-critical.
Performance Review
Keep track and follow up on the performance metrics of the service provider to assess their performance basis. This approach can be used as a recognition for their work and provide the right training opportunities, which can be beneficial for both the service provider and the business. It can also be used to identify strengths and weaknesses to further improve.
Conclusion
Both the service providers and your company have a part to play when it comes to ensuring the best cleaning standards for your office. Once you’re aware of the various ways to ensure the effectiveness of your office cleaning standards, it is time to take action. In doing so, your office will be kept spick and span and be a place of a safe and healthy environment always.
If you have not, there’s always the option of outsourcing cleaning affairs to ensure regular maintenance of your office with trained cleaners to increase your productivity. At Abba, we offer various commercial and office cleaning services, from disinfection, office carpet cleaning to upholstery cleaning. So, get in touch with us for a free quote and we’ll address your cleaning needs immediately.
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