Someone who doesn’t do a whole lot of commercial cleaning might assume that the office environment is among the easiest to clean. It is actually not. Offices have their challenges. And depending on what a company and its employees expect, office cleaning can actually be quite tedious. A good case in point is an office where everybody works in cubicles with their own desks.
It is not uncommon in such environments for workers to come in and find their desks are as messy as they left them the previous night. They wonder why the cleaning crew came in, did such a phenomenal job elsewhere, but still didn’t touch their desks. Well, there could be a number of reasons. Let us look at a few of them.
1. Unclear Expectations
Many situations like these are the result of unclear expectations. The employer and cleaning crew supervisor may not have communicated clearly enough about each party’s responsibilities. Maybe the cleaning crew didn’t know that desks were their responsibility. Or perhaps they did, but the employee didn’t realize the cleaners are prohibited by their employers from touching messy and cluttered desks.
Miscommunication is pretty common when it comes to commercial cleaning. That’s why we recommend spelling out everything that is expected of a cleaning crew in as much detail as possible.
2. A Fear of Moving Things
The issue could be a fear of moving things among cleaning crew members. Imagine a cleaner approaching a desk with several stacks of papers along with some unopened mail. If the cleaner moves things around and straightens things up, she takes the risk of alienating the person who normally occupies that desk. Maybe he comes in the next morning and cannot find a document he thought was in the stack. Blaming the cleaners could be a course of action.
3. Potentially Sensitive Information
Sometimes cleaners will not go near employee desks because they are concerned that they might be exposed to sensitive information. An employee may have inadvertently left documents out, documents that should have otherwise been put away. Cleaners don’t want to be responsible for sensitive information should there ever be any concerns that it was mishandled.
4. Company Policy
Moving on, some companies have strict policies against professional cleaners tidying up employee desks. They do not want cleaning crews anywhere near desks for the very reasons purposely mentioned. There might also be cases in which company policies prevent cleaning desks so that cleaners cannot ever be accused of stealing something. Companies make such policies all the time. They do it to protect themselves, their employees, and even the cleaning crews.
5. Accessibility Issues
Yet another reason for not touching desks is not having easy access to them. In an especially cramped office where space is tight, it might just be too difficult to get to a desk and clean it efficiently. Throw in time constraints and it could be a situation in which a cleaning crew member either cannot or will not put in the effort because cleaning a particular desk is too difficult.
Cleaning employee desks is always a tricky situation for commercial cleaners. We recommend discussing any issues involving desks with cleaning crew leads. Both cleaning crew and office manager should clearly understand what is expected. Furthermore, those expectations should be passed on to employees.
As long as everyone knows the expectations and does their part, the chances of early morning surprises go way down. That’s good. The last thing a company needs is employees who are unhappy before they even sit down to start work.
