The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how facilities are helping people stay healthy. Here is why schools need professional cleaning services going forward.
Schools prepare students to handle an uncertain future. But what can a school do when its own future becomes a question mark?
COVID-19 disrupted schools and colleges across America, turning much of the spring semester and all of the summer semester into online-only affairs for most places. Now, teachers and administrators must prepare to get back to life as normal as early as the fall. Unfortunately, it’s an open secret that things may never be completely normal. But with professional cleaning services, staff and students can be safer from infection and go to school each day with genuine peace of mind.
Every school can benefit from hiring professional cleaning services. In order to make a decision, it’s important to fully understand what those benefits are. The first benefit is straightforward, but it can also be very surprising. Hiring professional cleaners can actually save your school money!
Most businesses hesitate to hire cleaners because they don’t want to take on another expense for their business. But this one hiring decision can save your school money due to multiple reasons. One reason is that cleaning services are highly competitive with one another. You can typically get a full range of cleaning services for cheaper than the cost of a full janitorial staff, complete with salary and benefits. Another reason is that the janitorial staff will also have an additional cost each month in the form of various cleaning supplies. With professional cleaners, there is no additional supply cost, making it easier for you to budget for cleaning and even boost your bottom line in terms of both money and time.
Once you start managing finances for a large institution, you quickly discover that “time is money” is quite accurate. It doesn’t really help you if your initiatives to save time actually end up taking way too long. Fortunately, professional school cleaning services are a great way to save time on top of saving money. Part of the reason for this is that professional cleaners are already familiar with how to keep the school safer from COVID-19 and other potential infections. With your existing janitorial staff, you will likely need to conduct special training sessions and purchase proper cleaning tools. All of this takes time that you cannot afford to lose.
Another way to understand how much time you can save is to realize that professional cleaners can act entirely on their own and get the job done right. They do not need to go through a hiring process, a training process, or even receive constant supervision. Like your best employees, professional cleaners come in and immediately get to work. You end up saving time and getting a much cleaner and healthier school out of it!
Perhaps the scariest thing about COVID-19 and student health is all of the uncertainty. Opinions vary about whether it can linger on surfaces or not, and the idea of getting back together in small spaces like classrooms seemed very scary. Believe it or not, that makes this a perfect time to hire professional cleaning services. That’s because cleaners understand proper sanitation procedures above and beyond most janitors. Furthermore, they can help you set up sanitation stations and other areas so that life after COVID-19 is safer.
Of course, keeping students healthy means focusing on more than just COVID-19. Professional cleaners can help remove dirt, bacteria, allergens, and other components that negatively affect student health. Honestly, you shouldn’t think of cleaners as just a temporary response to COVID-19. Instead, you should look at this as a longterm opportunity to make your school cleaner and healthier than ever before. And best of all, these cleaners offer the kind of tailored cleaning experience your students and school deserve.
The tailored experience is important because administrators and staff don’t want a “one size fits all” approach to health and safety. They understand that such an approach would be a bad idea because what works perfectly for one school might be a nightmare for another school. Fortunately, professional cleaners specialize in offering flexible services to schools and other businesses. They don’t have a “one size fits all” approach because they don’t have one size. Instead, every solution is tailor-made from the ground up to fit your unique needs.
Ironically, professional cleaners can usually offer more flexibility than your janitorial service. That’s because janitors typically fall in the trap of doing the same cleaning routines regardless of what has happened. With professional cleaners, you get customized solutions that scale to the institution and to the situation at hand. And your school will benefit from a suite of cleaning services suitable to everything from a humble school to a posh executive suite.
Speaking of that, some people (particularly teachers) push back at the notion of running a school like a business or even comparing the two kinds of institutions. But the truth is that businesses can teach us many important lessons about running a more efficient institution. We’ve already touched on some of that efficiency: because you don’t have to train and manage your professional cleaners, it lets you focus your time and energy on other matters. And that applies to your existing janitorial staff as well. You don’t have to completely replace them with professional cleaners. Instead, each group can focus on different needs for your faculty, staff, and students.
When you get right to it, efficiency is a pretty simple formula. It’s all about finding the best people and letting them focus on what they do best. And with professional cleaners, you can get productivity benefits across your entire organization. Efficiency and productivity go hand-in-hand. Even when you have the best employees in place, it can be a struggle making sure everyone is operating in perfect synchronization with each other and with the school’s goals.
One unexpected way that professional cleaners can benefit your productivity is by providing cleaner and safer spaces for everyone to work. You know how many people clean their homes or offices when they are stressed out? That’s because we understand, even on a subconscious level, that we are happier and more productive workers in a cleaner environment. Some of that productivity comes from the fact that staff and teachers will now have someone else reliably cleaning classrooms and common areas. In many schools, a janitorial visit to a classroom means emptying the trash can and nothing else.
With professional cleaners, teachers can enjoy regularly enjoy a clean and safe environment. When someone walks into their classroom or office each day, they’ll see a room that looks just as clean and fresh as it did at the beginning of the year. Employee morale will significantly increase in this cleaner environment. And you might be surprised how productive this makes them, all while impressive anyone who visits the campus.
You’re surely familiar with the phrase that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And it’s surprising how often a school must make a good first impression! This includes the fresh crop of student freshman you get each year as well as their parents. But it also includes new teachers and staff, visiting board members, and assorted members of the community. Each one will form an instant impression of your school at first sight. If you use professional cleaners, then that first impression will be wonderful.
Earlier, we mentioned that professional cleaners take care of their own supplies. And that means one less thing for you to worry about in terms of the school budget. However, not worrying about cleaning supplies can also save a surprising amount of time. At the height of COVID-19 hysteria, everyone remembers what it was like to see shelves that were empty of various cleaning supplies. When that happens, it makes buying cleaning supplies like taking a trip into a warzone. And this just adds to the existing stress and cost of constantly replenishing those supplies. When you hire professional cleaners, though, you never need to worry about that again! And everyone at the school will be that much more prepared for the unknown.
So far, we’ve focused on preparing staff and students for life after COVID-19. But have you thought about what happens after that? COVID-19 was frightening in large part because it was unknown. We didn’t know how to test for it, treat it, or even the full extent of what it could do to the human body. And it may be morbid to think about, but the next COVID-19 could strike at any time. The best way to prepare for that unknown threat is to create the safest and cleanest possible school environment to reduce the risk of future infections.
When it comes to student safety, you should never settle for anything less than the best. That means hiring professional cleaners to help create a safer environment. In fact, the most basic thing we can provide for students is a safe environment. But threats of violence and other external factors have made that more difficult over the years. By hiring professional cleaners, you can fight infection and disease while providing a learning environment that your students deserve. And providing such a safe and clean environment will lead to better student performance and behavior that benefits the entire school!
There are more benefits to professional cleaning services than we could possibly dive into. But to get the most out of those benefits, you must know the right cleaners to entrust with the health and safety of your school. We specialize in cleaning schools and other businesses to the highest possible standard. To see what we can do for your own school, contact us today!