Maintaining a clean work environment is crucial for many factors. By keeping your workplace clean and hygienic, you will help to keep your workforce healthy, lower absences due to sickness or injury, create a more pleasant place to work for your employees, give a good first impression to clients and boost employee effectiveness and productivity. However, without ensuring that your entire team is on board when it comes to sticking to a cleaning schedule, it can be easy to let standards slip.
So how do we ensure that there is an ‘all hands on deck’ attitude when it comes to maintaining a clean work environment? Here we’ll explore why it’s crucial to have buy-in from your entire team and how to ensure that happens.
Maintaining a clean working environment – why should we care?
A clean workspace benefits everyone. But if you don’t get your entire team on board, it’s unlikely that you will be able to keep on top of your office cleaning schedule. A domino effect could easily occur as soon as one person starts to slack, and then you are back to square one. So what can you do about it? By engaging and motivating your team to care about office cleanliness, you’ll ensure that everyone is working together to create an office environment that’s pleasant to work in and safer and more hygienic too.
Tips for fostering employee engagement in maintaining a clean workspace
Share the hard-hitting facts
There is no denying that a clean and organised workspace is a better place to work, and the research is there to prove it. Office spaces that aren’t cleaned regularly can be a hotbed for bacteria and germs to grow. This can cause anything from unpleasant odours to the spread of disease. Don’t be afraid to share research and facts about how office illnesses can spread and what can be done to prevent them.
Be clear about standards and expectations
By making sure that everyone on your team is clear about what they must do to keep the office clean, you’ll have everyone on the same page from the outset. Make sure there is no confusion or room for interpretation, and keep a list of your expectations somewhere that employees can easily access if they need a reminder.
Create flexible cleaning rotas
Creating a cleaning schedule can be helpful if you want everyone to do their bit in terms of office cleaning. However, it is important to allow for some flexibility when doing so, as people will take time off or may have an increased workload which could affect their ability to help out. Be reasonable and encourage people to help one another to ensure that the cleaning tasks are completed regardless.
Make it fun
Cleaning isn’t the most enjoyable job for lots of people, so try to make it more lighthearted and fun. You could put some music on and dance around the office or even gamify your cleaning routine by setting timed challenges for your employees to keep up the momentum.
Be motivational
Everyone likes acknowledgement for a job well done, so make sure that you keep your team motivated and praise those who are committed to keeping the office clean.
Give them the tools they need
It’s hard to keep your office clean if you don’t have anything to clean it with. Make sure you have a good selection of cleaning products, cloths, dusters, a good hoover, washing up liquid, tea towels, and so on to help make it easier for your employees to finish their cleaning tasks.
Make it a collective responsibility
By emphasising the importance of teamwork and making cleaning a responsibility that everyone is jointly accountable for, you can ensure that each individual pulls their weight. If employees feel that they will let down their team members by not completing their tasks, this could be enough motivation to ensure that they stick to what they have agreed to.
Talk to repeat offenders
If some individuals in the office continue to avoid or refuse to do their part in keeping the office clean, make sure that you talk to them about it. Maintaining a clean work environment is something that every employee should help with. If some feel they don’t have to, it’s crucial to have a conversation with them to emphasise that you have noticed their lack of involvement and to iron out any issues.
Keep your end of the bargain
If you want your employees to buy into your office cleaning rules and routines, you need to make sure that you give them time to do so. They shouldn’t have to spend hours cleaning and scrubbing the workspace after work. It’s also vital that you are clear about your sickness absence policy. If employees feel they have to come to work even when they are ill, this can impact the entire workforce, lower morale, and increase the risk of diseases spreading around the office. It’s also essential that the office is a pleasant place to work – invest in some plants or art to keep it bright and stylish, and this will motivate your employees to want to keep the space as nice as possible.
Keep your workspace clean and hygienic all year round with Alliance Cleaning’s range of services.
At Alliance Cleaning, our range of professional cleaning services means you can ensure your office is clean, hygienic, and a pleasant workplace. From intensive deep cleans to daily office cleans, washroom and janitorial services, and specialist services such as carpet deep cleaning and window cleaning, whatever you require, why not get in touch with our friendly team, or get a quote to see what we can do for you today?
