Tag: commercial cleaning

Cleaning House Does Not Mean Cleaning Office: The Differences in Residential and Commercial Cleaning

Cleaning is cleaning. Everyone does it the same. Every space requires the same effort and order of cleaning. It’s all the same.

NO!

This is the farthest thing from the truth. It truly hurt my heart to write that very sentence! One person’s clean may very well be another person’s dirty – that’s what we say here at Clean Club Calgary. And this applies whether in a home or a workspace.

And just as there are differences in cleaning preferences, there are even further differences in how one cleans a residence versus a commercial space.

The Dusty Devil in the Details

Residential Dusting

As much as we love our dust bunny friends, they need to be evicted as they impact air quality. Dig into the exact details on how and why to dust at home right here. A quick overview: go top to bottom, left to right; feather dusters are bad; use the right materials properly and use them often!

Commercial Dusting

Traditionally, dusting in workplaces was minimal. Today, as we’ve become more aware of how dust impacts our health, companies are regularly requesting dusting. Now, cleaners wipe everything on one’s desk (keyboard, mouse, phone, desk surface). *

Interestingly, many of our clients are in spaces where their landlord is responsible for ensuring the duct systems are cleaned. This allows for proper ventilation. While we can dust as part of a cleaning package, it is virtually impossible to remove all dust if the air ducts are circulating with dust from the rest of the building.

Dusting is definitely not a one size fits all

*Note: we recommend you implement a clean desk policy as, by law, cleaners are not allowed to touch and/or move any paper remaining on a surface. If your employees do not remove the paper, we are not able to take all the necessary steps to ensure proper cleaning, sanitizing, and/or disinfection.

Floor Fashions that Differ

Residential Floor Cleaning

Vacuuming is VERY detailed for residential services. As much as we can, we move furniture, lift area rugs, vacuum under, heck sometimes even over. Anywhere that’s easy to reach gets a detailed vacuum every, single time.

Once we’ve vacuumed, we solidify the work by mopping. Using a freshly cleaned microfibre cloth, mopping picks up any dust that beat the initial vacuum power!

Commercial Floor Cleaning

Commercial vacuuming is done once every 1 – 2 weeks and is not quite as detailed as residential vacuuming. For Clean Club Calgary’s commercial cleaning clients (contract stipulations apply), we provide a once/year deep clean, which ensures digging into the nooks and crannies to remove as much as possible. This requires support in lifting stuff off the floor, pulling out desks from walls, and other such involvement from the client.

For commercial mopping, we have special mop heads. Unlike the microfibre cloths we use in residences, these must be sent away to be laundered because of the special material and size they are. It is an additional step in how we care for our cleaning materials that is one of the major differences between residential and commercial clients and cleaning frequencies.

Busting Bathroom Rumors

Residential Bathrooms

Each time you ask us to clean the bathroom, it is always a thoroughly deep clean as we do not offer the same frequency cleaning packages as we do for commercial cleaning. With more and more people working from home, a deep bathroom clean, particularly the bathroom, shower, and sink surfaces, is always one that is included. Other things for the bathroom that need deep cleaning, but not every time include the lights, which should be done monthly, and the ceiling fans (and vents), to be cleaned quarterly. The cabinets and baseboards are cleaned every 2 – 4 weeks.

Commercial Bathrooms

While the actual cleaning techniques are similar, it’s the frequency and depth of clean that vary. With Clean Club Calgary, our commercial cleaning packages typically offer daily, 3 times/week, 1 time/week, or monthly (our most common) service.

For daily commercial cleaning clients, we are able to replenish their supplies (e.g. paper products, hand soap, and sanitizer). We also do the surfaces and toilet cleaning as well every time. Once per week, we do a deeper clean, getting into the corners, scrubbing the base of toilets, washing stall dividers and the wall tiles.

The touchpoints for both residential and commercial are always sanitized with each clean. These are areas such as doorknobs, switch plates, faucets, knobs, etc.

Kitchen Cleaning

Residential Kitchens

More and more meals are cooked from home, and the beautiful messes left behind are showing us that kitchens are being USED! While we have our usual cleaning, which involves wipe down, sanitize, and make it sparkle, we also complete deep residential kitchen cleans by request. These include things such as washing the counters and/or backsplash, cleaning the stove, washing the fridge (inside and out), cleaning the oven, wipe down the cabinets, wipe inside the cabinets, etc.

With our mopping, we have one rule of thumb, taught Day One of team member training: Mop Twice!

Commercial Kitchens

For our daily and 3x/week service, we do surface level every week. Once a month, we do a deep clean of the kitchen, including a fridge wipe (and throw) out.

While there are not as many large appliances as there are in residences, we do still wipe down the small ones most kitchens have (coffee machine, toaster, and microwave). 99 percent of the time, people in the office take the responsibility for office dishes, whether washing by hand or in a dishwasher.

The kitchen is probably where we spend most of our time mopping as it is one of the most heavily used rooms in an office. There is a lot of traffic with numerous coffee breaks, water breaks, breakfast, snacks, lunch, afternoons snacks all leaving behind scuffs, dirt, and spills.

Whether residential or commercial, what’s important is the work is done by a professional, in a manner that provides a higher quality of living.

If you’re curious as to how we can clean so you don’t have to, connect for an instant quote.

May 20, 2021
How to Create Physically and Psychologically Safe Spaces for Employees
Will I be safe going back to work? Can I do my job without fear of getting sick? Can I touch things? Am I just being silly or am I going to be safe?

I’m seeing a huge shift in how businesses view cleaning, particularly as Alberta further reopens. This shift is in how businesses are viewing cleaning as it relates to the overall wellness of their company.

It’s funny as we used to take cleanliness for granted and hope that it would ‘somehow’ happen. But now, because we associate the word ‘clean’ with something that is virus-free, it has become much more than what it used to be.

No longer is commercial cleaning about first impressions and simple cleanliness. It is about reassurance. Reassurance that you and your space are safe, helping to ease anxieties about viruses that may be innocently lurking on every surface.

In conversation with clients, cleaning has now become part of their everyday safety protocols. This ensures their safety beyond the surfaces they touch, including:
- Improving the actual environment for your team’s physical health,
- Building better psychologically safe environments for your team’s mental wellness, and
- Turning cleaning as an expense into an investment to properly support both of the above.
It’s so important that we employers take the time to understand the full impact that COVID-19 had on employees from a mental standpoint, as much as it the physical toll it took.
IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

Your team cannot be in your office as you once were able to. The Alberta Government has done a good job of highlighting what you need to do to ensure you properly reopen, however, there is one crucial piece missing. That’s how to support your people with the physical AND the mental impact of COVID on them.

There is plenty of research done on how cleaning can improve your team’s productivity. Specifically, by focusing on sanitization, along with implementing specific rules for sick colleagues (e.g. do not come into work if you have the sniffles), you help your team remain healthy by:
- Minimizing the potential for germs and cross-contamination,
- Improving the overall air quality for your team, and
- Supporting/building a culture of true physical safety.
Where more research is being done today is on how cleaning can improve the overall psychological health of your team, especially as fear and anxieties have been heightened since COVID. Focusing on psychological safety and resilience helps you to:
- Support your team to remove/reduce any fear they may be feeling,
- Build a culture of diversity, inclusion, and open communication, and
- Encourage more creativity, resilience, and efficiencies in your team members.
SMALL DETAILS MAKE HUGE IMPACT

There are big things that you can do to let your team know they are safe such as putting up signs indicating what cleaning/sanitizing will be done and when; clearly marking hand sanitation stations; changing your doors to automatic/motion censored, and so forth.

However, it’s the small details that make a deeper impact on the overall mental health and safety of your team. The small details are what allow us, as individuals, to understand what we can and cannot control. This helps us to bring a sense of order for ourselves. These small details can include:
- Scheduling daily or weekly 1:1 check-ins with your individual team members to encourage them to share where they’re at from a mental standpoint. Sometimes, your team needs to feel seen, be heard, and encouraged to focus on their individual mental wellness; and
- Provide welcome back packages, filled with small items that support both the psychological and physical needs of your team, allowing them to do their work safely.
It’s when you start engaging in these small behaviours that you encourage resiliency, communication, and improved performance because you are demonstrating that you CARE about your team as individual people.
CLEANING IS AN INVESTMENT LINE ITEM

The truth is, your people are not safe if you only have professional commercial cleaning done once or twice a month. There is a reason why hotels are having to revamp their cleaning policies and realities of how much they can do simply because of the increase in sanitization standards. Same with restaurants, grocery stores, yoga studios, chiropractic offices and so many more! It is because proper cleaning and sanitizing are crucial to keeping people safe.

My own conversations with clients have been about shifting their cleaning budget from an expense to a non-negotiable operational line item. The key here in supporting them is to ensure all our professional cleaners have the proper training and certification to follow the guidelines as set out by the province…and our own standards as well.

The long and the short of it is that cleaning is transitioning to become a key operation for businesses to thrive in our new business reality. It’s no longer merely about keeping the space clean but keeping your people confident and comfortable in your space.

Looking for a special touch in supporting your team as you all come back together? Have a look at our individual Clean Club Calgary Welcome Back Bags, containing hand sanitizer, disinfectant spray, a roll of wipes, and a face mask (made by a local Calgary company!). To inquire about multiple packages, inquire with the number of packages you’re interested in here: https://www.cleanclubcalgary.com/products.
June 18, 2020