You need to perform cleaning inspections to ensure your clients are getting quality work. You also don’t have unlimited time. Here’s what to do.
As a commercial cleaning business owner or supervisor, you stay busy. You’re hiring and training new employees, meeting customers, bidding on jobs, ordering supplies and equipment, and taking care of administrative tasks like scheduling. You also need to find time to perform cleaning inspections.
Without regular inspections, you can’t guarantee the quality of the work your company performs. Without inspections, it’s hard to catch training issues or knowledge gaps. Without inspections, there’s no way to know what your clients are experiencing.
How do you balance this? Where do inspections fit into your overall work schedule? Here are a few ways to determine how often you need to perform cleaning inspections – and you’ll discover some tips that can make inspections easier.
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How often do you need to perform cleaning inspections? Here’s the answer
In actuality, there isn’t just one answer to this question. Even within your specific business, there are several answers. It would be nice and easy if it were as simple as scheduling an inspection every 4th appointment or something like that.
But you have different clients with various needs. Your team includes veteran cleaners and people new to your company. Floors tend to need more attention in winter than in summer. Clients care more about some things than others. So where does that leave you?
Even though we may not have a perfect number, there are some general guidelines that can help you determine how often you should perform cleaning inspections. However, whatever you decide is right for you, it’s vitally important to set a schedule. Without a schedule, those weekly inspections soon become every few weeks, then every few months. Before you know it, clients are ending their contracts because they haven’t been happy with the work for some time.
Now then, what are some good intervals to perform cleaning inspections? Here are some guidelines you can use to help make that decision.
For new clients, consider scheduling inspections after the first or second appointment, then weekly for the next month. You want to ensure you, your team, and your client are all aligned on expectations and what needs to be done.
For new employees, a similar schedule may be beneficial. That can help you catch any gaps in training or correct bad habits before they get ingrained.
For longer-term clients and veteran commercial cleaning teams, you can spread out how often you perform cleaning inspections. I’ve seen some commentary that a rate of around 10% is good for inspections. So a facility that gets cleaned five nights each week would have an inspection every two weeks.
The 10% rate seems reasonable, for the most part. However, you may want to consider more frequent inspections during seasonal changes. Salt and slush in winter, mud in spring, and leaves in the fall can all add to the amount of work your team will need to do to keep up.
The easy way to do an inspection
You can also make it easier to perform cleaning inspections. They don’t need to take all of your time. One shortcut is to use your cleaning checklist as your inspection list. Even then, however, there’s a way to save time and keep records of your inspections.
Janitorial Manager’s Janitorial Inspections App keeps everything in one place for you. Sort by location, track specific trouble spots, and add photos so you and your client can see exactly what work has been completed. The app also lets you schedule routine inspections, create and save templates, and it makes reporting easier than ever.
Again, there’s no perfect answer to how often to perform cleaning inspections. Your clients and the way your run your business will help inform the answer.
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