At some point, every business owner has contemplated handling janitorial duties in-house. After all, if the building isn’t that big, how hard could it really be?
While sometimes that math does work out in your favor, more often, it doesn’t. In fact, most business owners find out the hard way that DIY cleaning is mentally and physically taxing compared to janitorial services in Houston.
This isn’t a sales pitch disguised as a comparison. This is an honest assessment of which option makes the most sense.
What Does DIY Cleaning Mean?
In a professional setting, DIY cleaning can mean one of two things. Either existing employees are handed cleaning tasks as part of their duties, or a part-time cleaner is hired directly rather than contracted through a janitorial company.
The Real Cost of Letting Employees Handle the Cleaning
This might sound like a surprising set-up, but it’s particularly common in startups or small businesses that are struggling with budgets. In its most limited form, everyone cleans up after themselves and is responsible for their own workspace.
It sounds simple, but the problem starts when it scales beyond a handful of people or when tasks are expanded to vacuuming, mopping, and cleaning up the restroom.
1. Productivity
While cleaning up after yourself and delegating maintenance tasks to employees might seem like a solid plan, the productivity cost is real and underestimated. Employees who are spending, say, 30 minutes on a cleaning task are spending 30 minutes less on the work you actually hired them to do. That is a significant chunk of your revenue lost.
2. Liability Exposure
Commercial cleaning involves handling chemicals, equipment, and the occasional ladder. When employees are asked to perform these tasks without training, the risk of injuries and slip and fall incidents increases exponentially. The liability and blame of such unfortunate incidents shift to the employer. Professional janitorial services in Houston have their own insurance, which eliminates this issue entirely.
3. Resentment
Asking professional employees to clean restrooms and mop floors creates resentment that shows up in their morale. People do not take their professional jobs to clean, and making it part of the expectation will eventually affect how they feel about working there.
4. Poor Work Performance
Since employees cleaning their workplace aren’t trained, they’re subject to fatigue, and that shows up in the cleaning quality. So get it from an expert working space cleaner.
Bringing a Cleaner on Staff
The other aspect of DIY cleaning is hiring a part-time or full-time cleaner directly. This is a better approach than asking employees to clean. However, it can get quite expensive.
- Payroll taxes are added on top of wages
- Workers’ compensation insurance runs around 2% to 5% of payroll
- The cost of recruiting, hiring, onboarding, paywork and processing payroll often goes unnoticed. Not to forget the stress and workload of handling turnover and re-hiring when the cleaner leaves.
- You’re responsible for providing all cleaning chemicals, equipment, and consumables.
- When a direct hire calls in sick or simply doesn’t show up, the cleaning isn’t taken care of until you actively find a backup solution. A professional janitorial company is contractually responsible for coverage since it’s their staffing problem, not yours.
When you account for all these seemingly insignificant costs, the total cost of a direct hire is usually the same or a lot more than simply delegating the task to a professional janitorial company.
Professional Cleaning Delivers Quality DIY Cleaning Can’t Match
We’ve already discussed the labor aspect. The quality and capability differences are an entirely separate discussion.
1. Access to Industrial-Grade Equipment
Commercial vacuums and scrubbers are a lot more effective than the regular equipment you get at your local supermarket. A commercial vacuum has HEPA filtration that removes particulate matter and scrubbers clean and dry hard floors in a fraction of the time of a standard mop-and-bucket system.
2. Consistency and Accountability
Professional janitorial companies have management structures and protocols that create accountability. If cleaning quality slips, they’ve already got an escalation path in place. DIY cleaning, on the other hand, has no equivalent accountability structure.
3. Compliance
In industries such as healthcare and foodservice, cleaning and disinfection protocols are almost always subject to inspection and documentation requirements. Professional companies have cleaning logs, product documentation, and compliance records to fall back on. DIY cleaners don’t.
Is DIY Cleaning All That Bad?
In the spirit of honesty, the answer to that question is no. There are situations in which in-house cleaning is pretty helpful:
- Your office is small, and there’s minimal daily use; for example, most of your employees work from home.
- You’ve got cleaning requirements that are so specific, only in-house staff is capable of following them
For most commercial facilities, professional services provider better outcomes at better total costs.
Professional Janitorial Services for the Win!
Since we’re all about honesty here, professional janitorial services in Houston are almost always the better choice for commercial facilities. If you’re looking for a company to provide just that, look no further than American Janitorial Houston!
We’ve got consistent crews and documented quality standards that make us the practical choice. Reach out to us to get a quote built around your specific facility and schedule!
