The best janitorial duties checklist will only help you so much if your team doesn’t use it. Here’s how to make one that your team will love.
Your janitorial duties checklist is an essential part of your cleaning program. A thorough checklist ensures the job gets done right, and your customers get what they expect. Checklists also make it easier for your team to do their job – if they actually use the list.
One of the biggest failures of almost any janitorial duties checklist is the lack of follow-through and getting your staff to use it. Sure, they may look at the checklist for a few shifts. But once they have the checklist mostly memorized, it becomes more and more rare that they even look at it.
With paper or whiteboard checklists, that wasn’t much of a problem. In fact, memorizing the checklist could speed things up. But with a digital checklist, tasks could be added or changed at any point. Additionally, digital checklists give you a record of who cleaned an area and when they cleaned it. That tracking comes in especially handy when there are questions or confusion about something.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that even the best employees will eventually ignore the checklist. So in order for your janitorial duties checklist to contribute to your business, you need to make one that your team will use.
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The 9 characteristics of a janitorial duties checklist that your team will use
1. Organized. If you expect your team to follow a checklist, it has to be organized. How you organize it may depend on the facility. For example, an office building with three floors might be organized by floor, whereas it might make more sense to organize a 1,200-square-foot restaurant by section.
2. Easy to follow. The best janitorial duties checklist should be more than a list of tasks. You could even think of this as the next step in organization. For example, your checklist might begin with cleaning windows, then move to dusting high surfaces, then lower surfaces, and ending with floors.
3. Easy to read. Use bold or highlighted text. Keep things in a nice list.
4. Weekly and monthly tasks are noted. One place your janitorial duties checklist can run into problems is in weekly or monthly tasks. If they aren’t specifically scheduled, it’s easy to skip them, thinking they are already done or don’t need to be done yet. With that in mind, note the days these tasks should be attended to. For example, change HVAC filters on the first day of each month, or empty and wipe down shelving every Tuesday.
5. Keep it simple. To the extent possible, keep your janitorial duties checklist simple. You don’t need to write down all the details of cleaning a breakroom microwave, for example. “Clean microwave inside and out,” should be sufficient in most cases. Get too in-depth and your team will skip it.
6. Use QR codes. QR codes ensure accountability. How? When you use a tool like Scan4Clean, anyone from other team members to the general public can see when an area was last cleaned, who did the cleaning, and what tasks were performed.
7. Don’t overdo it. Your janitorial duties checklist should be a helpful reference tool. It’s not there to walk your team through each task step by step. In fact, a checklist that’s too long and cumbersome can overwhelm your team. Rather than encouraging them, an overdone checklist will promote dissension and avoidance.
8. Link to further instructions. One nice thing about a digital checklist is that you can keep it simple and short, but still link to more detailed instructions for employees who may want that.
9. Explain the “why” behind the checklist. Many employees feel more inspired to follow a rule (like using a checklist) if they know what the purpose is. There are multiple reasons for using a checklist, but one that we can likely all appreciate is that it keeps us from duplicating tasks. Especially when you have teams working in one location, a checklist can let someone know instantly if a task has been completed or not. And let’s be honest, sometimes even when it’s just us, we forget whether or not we’ve done something, so a checklist comes in handy there, too.
A janitorial duties checklist can be an effective way to communicate with your team and with your customers. And it can help employees move more confidently through their work.
Take advantage of the value Janitorial Manager can bring to your cleaning operation to streamline your processes like never before. Learn more today with a discovery call and find out how to make your cleaning operation more efficient and cost effective!