Balancing Cleanliness and Cost
This is a very difficult time to balance the cleaning needs of your office or facility with the costs associated with those cleaning services.
But, many firms are doing just that, as they attempt to fully reopen offices or offer hybrid work hours to some employees. While some employees are desperate to get out of the house and back to the workplace and will not be placing rigorous demands on the cleanliness of your workspace, others are reluctant to jump back in without assurances regarding the hygienic and disinfectant efforts being put in place to protect them from Covid-19 and its variants.
You are in a negotiation between your balance sheet and your employee safety and sense of well-being.
A conversation with Excel can alleviate some of your concerns and assist you in determining what you need to do to provide the safest work environment based on your current plans for employee in-office attendance.
The impact of the hybrid workplace
The hybrid work model has come into vogue thanks to the pandemic and the quarantine. While employees discovered the pleasures (and the pitfalls) of working from home, employers discovered that some of their employees can get their work done without coming into the workplace. True, there are work situations that require physical attendance, in fields like manufacturing and production, but workplaces that involve more thinking and talking than physical activity are suddenly less necessary on a daily basis. Not completely unnecessary, mind you, just less necessary.
Thus, an office manager charged with maintaining a clean work environment can think that their cleaning needs are required less frequently since fewer human bodies will be in the office for fewer hours each week. And those office managers might have a point.
But those employees who are coming into the office do so with a sharpened attention to cleanliness and detail. While some people have completely gotten over any fear related to catching the Covid-19 virus, others are acutely aware that the virus has a new variant strain known as the delta variant, and new fears have ramped up.
Suddenly, office managers have several new points to consider in providing a clean work environment:
fewer people coming into the office on fewer days of the week,
Employees have become accustomed to wearing masks and washing hands.
Employees know that surfaces can hold onto germs that can lead to illness.
For better or for worse, people know more now about what it takes to maintain a clean environment. And it is up to you to meet their demands for a healthy workplace.
And then there is the cost
Based on the frequency of your cleaning efforts prior to the pandemic, do you now need to increase your attention to disinfecting work stations to keep your employees safe? Do you need to increase your budget for cleaning services as a result? Or, does the hybrid nature of the workplace attendance balance that greater attention to cleaning detail?
There needs to be a conversation among all office management involved with budgeting and human resources to determine how far the company must go to meet the hygiene demands of employees in 2021. Even for companies who were diligent about cleanliness prior to the pandemic, new demands are going to be made, not only by employees but also by visitors to your office. It must also be discussed whether any changes are for the long term or just until somebody in a position of authority provides the “all-clear” signal.
Once you know what you want to do, contact Excel Cleaning Services to determine how best to approach your needs from both the standpoint of cleanliness and of cost. We have worked with companies of all shapes and sizes, and we are attuned to the new pressures that exist for companies to provide a clean and safe workplace.