Cleaning Buyers’ Guide

Commercial
Cleaning Buyers’
Guide

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Table of Contents
Why commercial cleaning services are necessity and crucial
for your business?
03
How to evaluate your facilities specific cleaning needs?
05
The right questions to ask when interviewing cleaning
companies.
08
How to protect your company from liability and avoid legal
mistakes?
11
How to play the pricing game with commercial cleaning
services?
14
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Why commercial cleaning services are necessity and
crucial for your business?
Professional cleaning companies provide you with essential products and
services that are needed to maintain a healthy, clean and productive
environment for your business. Every employer is responsible for providing
employees with clean and sanitary work space. Your employee spends a great
part of the day at work, and if it is not cleaned properly, the workplace can
easily become a breeding ground for bacteria and disease. The diseases caused
from bacteria can spread around quite fast and affect your entire staff’s health,
leaving you not only short-staffed, but also, possibly, with inspections and
lawsuits.
A clean work space is a more effective workplace. An uncluttered, clean
environment will make your employee happier, more satisfied with their job
thus resulting in better workplace results.
Probably the most important reason for having a clean working environment is
“first impressions matter.” No one will take you seriously if your workplace is
dirty. The way your offices look, your business’s physical appearance, says a lot
about your working ethic and it can easily attract or turn off customers.
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If split the cleaning between your employees, or hire one employee to do the
job, this could be a big mistake. The first scenario will most likely result in
unsatisfied employees. Furthermore, because they aren’t trained in that field
they will certainly not excel at it. In second scenario, for larger spaces the one
employee may not be able to successfully keep up with cleaning the entire
working place and cleaning administrative related tasks. Not to mention
investing in cleaning supplies, machines and additional training. Ultimately, the
best decision is to go with a professional cleaning company.
To save you some trouble, we created this guide that will help you
evaluate your facilities’ specific cleaning needs, find the best cleaning
companies to hire and protect your company from liability, avoid any
legal mistakes and learn all the pricing games companies may try to pull
on you.
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How to evaluate your facilities specific needs?
Before making any decisions regarding hiring a cleaning company you should
evaluate your facilities specific cleaning needs and learn about the types of
cleaning services that exist on the market and what they offer, so you can
make the smart choice.
First, analyze your facilities. Do you have a smaller facility with around 30-40
employees or larger one? Take into consideration your daily/weekly demands
and if your company have specialized cleaning requirements such as getting rid
of biohazardous materials, as in healthcare. Every company has a different
culture, working environment, and budget to take into consideration. Do you
need a cleaning crew only for taking out the trash a couple of times per week
and for occasional vacuuming and dusting OR do you have a larger facility with
a high number of employees, clients, and visitors that requires multiple
cleanings per day and standard cleaning crew working at night?
Some facilities also have kitchens and some even showers, so you need to take
this into consideration too and add it to your needs list. In this case, you will
need to search for cleaning companies that combine residential and
commercial services.
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Once you have a list and know what you want, you can move to choosing the
right cleaning company that fit your requirement and budget. Most cleaning
companies offer the common day-to-day janitorial duties such as: vacuuming,
dusting, cleaning windows & glass, changing toiletries, restocking paper, taking
out the trash, and cleaning rest rooms. Of course, these are some of the basic
duties they perform and are included in almost every contract. However, most
of the commercial cleaning services also provide additional services, called
special services.
The special services often can be misused to trap customers and lure them into
double meaning contracts. So, what are special services, what do they include,
and how to avoid ending up in a trap?
Basically, special services are requests you may add to a ‘basic package’ and
can be everything from taking care of your expensive office furniture or
paintings to polishing your wooden floors.
Other common special services are:
painting walls or dusting ceilings
small fixtures or light maintenance
pressure washing outside of building
kitchen maintenance (wash and put away dishes, clean countertops, toss
expired food and drinks in refrigerator etc.)
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emergency clean-up
etc
These services can take from several hours, to a day or several days to
accomplish depending on what they are. Many cleaning companies accept
adding special services to their basic packages. It’s important to confirm these
services in advance and read closely over everything in the contract.
Don’t sign confusing contracts that may include franchise companies with
longer than 30 day cancellation period. Some companies include small but
important clause that states that you can only cancel the current franchisee,
but the franchisor has the right to continue to bring in other franchisee
companies. This almost always leads to months of headache and problems, and
to avoid them, read the entire contract carefully and never agree to more than
a 30 day cancellation period.
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The right interviewing questions to ask
Before you start the interview with a commercial cleaning company, make sure
it will be worth your time. Do your homework on your prospective cleaners,
perform an easy and quick Google search and review their online reviews.
Discuss their performance with current and previous clients both.
Find out how long have they been into the business and don’t be shy to ask for
references. A good commercial cleaning company will always have at least 5-6
solid references. Most important of all, don’t let their big name or size fool you.
Decide depending on your budget and research.
Small “mom and pop” cleaning services may look fine to you if you have small
business, but quite often they struggle with responding to emergencies or
unexpected changes in circumstances due to lack of staff. Mid-sized companies
are usually most efficient since they tend to give you the attention of a small
company with roughly the same resources of the large national companies.
Large national and regional companies may have ultra-new technology and
provide exquisite service, but quite often, if you are not one of their larger
customers they may not consider you a high priority. The trickiest are franchise
cleaning companies, which may sound big because of their association with the
franchise, but they’re often small companies which are trained by the
franchisor but aren’t really their employees. Plus these cleaning companies
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usually pay fee to franchisor which may result in bigger costs but not
necessarily better service.
Once you make decision on which type of companies you will go with, focus on
the interviews.
Interview Questions Suggestions
What types of clients do you have?
Have you worked previously with company in same business as we are and
what was your experience with them?
What services do you provide? (Make sure they tell you exactly what they
do and how they do it, “we clean everything” is always a warning alert!)
Are you able to meet all our requirements? (Always insist on clearly stating
it in the contract with clearly stated prices.)
What other services do you provide?
Do you bring your own equipment and supplies?
How do you deal with emergency calls and what is usually the time in
which you respond to them?
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Interview Questions Suggestions
Do you have a satisfaction guarantee?
What is the final cost of everything? Can it be stated clearly in the contract?
Do you conduct a background check on your employees?
Can I see proof of background checks and results of drug tests you
conducted?
Do you carry worker’s compensation?
Are you insured and bonded?
What type of insurance you have and what is its minimum?
Can I get an up-to-date proof of insurance or an insurance certificate?
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How to protect your company from liability and avoid
legal mistakes?
As you probably noticed, the last few interview questions listed are regarding
insurance and avoiding liability or legal mistakes. This is one of the crucial
things you need to know before hiring a commercial cleaning company. Hiring
the wrong company can seriously cost you if property is lost, stolen or
damaged. So make sure you are well-informed on this subject.
There are 4 types of insurance:
General Liability Insurance – this is the first line of defense against a variety of
claims from alleged negligence to wrong doing by your commercial cleaning
company and it is a must have. It’s strongly recommended that you make sure
your cleaners have at least a minimum of 1 million dollars of general liability
insurance. NEVER HIRE a company without General Liability Insurance.
Workers Compensation Insurance – is basically a form of “social insurance”
which covers job related injuries or in worst situation death of an employee. It
compensates the employee or their heirs regardless of whose fault it was. It
covers employees’ injury both at your place of business and during business
related travel. Again, make sure to verify that the cleaning company has this
insurance and their coverage is at least 1 million dollars and it’s clearly stated on
the insurance certificate.
Automobile Liability Insurance – as the name states itself, this insurance policy
protects people and property from accidents that occur involving your cleaning
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company’s auto fleet. Any accidents that can occur on their way to your
company can easily put your business at risk. You never know the way they
operate their vehicles and what may happen on the road. Therefore in order to
be completely sure that you are not holding any liability and putting your
business in jeopardy make sure the cleaning company has this type of
insurance.
Umbrella Policies – this is the worst case scenarios preventers: it covers all
losses in excess over General Liability, workers compensation and auto liability
insurance. In simple words, if the worst happens and you have a claim
settlement that exceeds the 1 million dollars in general ability coverage of your
cleaning company, then the umbrella policy will pick up the additional expense
together with the legal expenses and you won’t have to worry about anything.
Considering that this is the ‘ultimate’ insurance, make sure the cleaning
company has at least 5 - 6 million dollars Umbrella Coverage on their insurance
certificate.
Now, the question you may ask, is how to make sure the insurance certificate is
authentic? Well, the authentic insurance certificate will be mailed to you by a
insurance carrier and will contain your company’s name and the BSC’s name as
the insured, it will list the insured limits and has an expiration date. You can
always check it with the insurance company to be 100% sure it is legit.
Insurance is not the only thing that can cause you problems and put your
reputation in jeopardy. If the commercial cleaning company you hire has illegal
workers (no matter if it is a immigrant without proper documentation or
workers who are intentionally misclassified as independent contractors so
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employers can avoid paying taxes, Social Security or worker’s compensation)
and they get caught their company will suffer terrible consequences, they will
be arrested and you may end up joining them if it’s believed you were aware of
the situation. To avoid this, make sure the company you hire uses the Federal
Government’s E-Verify service that helps assure they only use legal workers.
Furthermore, to be completely sure that the employees that your
cleaning company has are legal and won’t cause any trouble to you or
have any legal problems, ask these additional questions during the
interview:
Are all employees you send legal, and what type of employee
recognition programs you have?
How do you check your employees background, or better where do you
find them?
Do you have a documented training program that your employee go
through before being hired?
Do you have all the documents for them, including all the insurances?
What type of benefits do you provide your employees?
Do you guarantee for your employees?
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How to play the pricing game?
The last thing you must be aware of before hiring a commercial cleaning
company is the pricing games that some cleaning services may play.
You need to pay attention to a few things.
If the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is! And no, it is not a
negative perspective but sad truth that may cost you a lot! If a company offers
you to do the same job as others in their range for half the price, ask yourself
why and how?
Why would a company do that? Maybe they are new to the market or trying to
win customers.
How will they achieve it? Don’t be afraid to ask them these questions, in fact
you must ask them. Be logical, how can they achieve that? They must be
cutting on something in order to be able to afford and make that deal with you.
So will they use cheaper equipment? Will they cut from employees’ paycheck?
Or worse, will they “cut corners” and probably break the law in doing so?
Furthermore, ask them all the questions regarding their employees mentioned
in the previous section. If there is a hint of any dishonesty in their answers
consider that a huge red flag.
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The second thing you should look for is hidden prices in contracts or loopholes
that may lead you to serious penalties in the case of breaking the contract due
to unsatisfactory work. To avoid this, make sure the contract you guys agree
on is simple and clear, with all the right documentation (insurances) and prices
stated clearly in the contract. Agree on the prices of everything (including
special services) and insist on having them listed all in the contract so there
won’t be any misunderstanding later.
Also always check for clauses that state that you can only cancel the current
franchisee, but the franchisor has the right to continue to bring in other
franchisee companies. You definitely don’t need that to be part of your
contract, in fact, go even further and insist on 30 days cancelation period. If
the commercial cleaning company is honest, real and good at their job, they
will agree with this, understand it, and will have no problems answering all
your questions.
Remember, it is always better to take as much time as necessary researching
and asking questions that will reassure you that you are making the right
choice than later ending up with the wrong company, putting you and your
company’s safety and reputation at risk.
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