If you are a building landlord or owner, or you’re an office, store, or facilities manager, one of your key challenges is finding a reliable commercial bathroom cleaning service. Bathrooms are one of the most widely-used areas of a building with many people—both workers and customers—using the facility. Infectious diseases, bacteria, viruses, and germs grow in commercial restrooms.
In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that people can contract illnesses such as the common cold, stomach flu, E. coli, hepatitis A, and staphylococcus from dirty bathrooms. These germs lurk on doorknobs, countertops, sinks, and toilet fixtures. Some can even live more than two hours on a hard surface.
Each time an employee or customer flushes the toilet, millions of water particles along with bacteria and viruses can spread up to 20 feet into the air. If your bathroom is not clean, it can hurt your building’s reputation causing stores and customers to spend their money elsewhere.
If you want to maintain a productive and healthy work environment, employees and visitors will be seeking a sanitary bathroom. This area is one of the busiest in any company and requires constant attention and care from professionals.
How Commercial Bathroom Cleaning Can Boost Company Morale
A clean bathroom is valuable for an office’s tenants, its employees, its customers, as well as the school staff, students, and church attendees. It also will protect your corporate brand, your reputation, and your staff and customers’ perception of your business. Employee absenteeism will be reduced due to fewer viruses and bacteria being transmitted. Your employees and visitors will face less unpleasant odors and notice less grit and grime from repeated use.
Having a clean bathroom is especially imperative if you’re in the hospitality or service industry where the bathroom sees many visitors. Take, for example, a restaurant, where diners, servers, and cooks are using the same bathroom. If it is not clean, the customer’s perception will be severely impacted in a negative manner. This will make a mark while they are eating but also afterward when they decide to recommend or not recommend the restaurant.
Some Important Statistics
If you need data to prompt you to use commercial bathroom cleaning services, consider these studies. When the coronavirus emerged in the U.S., people were so nervous that they were washing their hands more than ever before. In fact, a June 2020 study by the CDC and Prevention found Americans were lathering up twice as often as they did in 2019.
At one Chicago hospital that electronically tracks the use of soap and sanitizer 24/7 at every room’s entrance and exit, a new study found that its staff was 100% compliant after the virus became prevalent. But in four months, the hospital’s doctors, nurses, technicians, and cleaning crew fell back to just 51.5% of daily handwashing compliance, according to a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine.
According to a Harris Poll survey conducted this summer, 86% said that a clean restroom is as important as a clean kitchen and 75% said that they wouldn’t return to a restaurant that had a dirty bathroom.
Another survey conducted in November 2019 by the Cintas Corporation found that 94% of people said that they wouldn’t do business with people (again) who had a dirty bathroom, irrespective of the industry. While certain businesses lose more business than others if they have a dirty bathroom (restaurants and hotels lose the worse-according to 80% of the people surveyed), having a dirty bathroom is bad for all businesses.
Cintas asked over 1,000 adults what specific types of businesses they would avoid if they encountered dirty restrooms, and they reported restaurants, hotels, health care facilities, supermarkets, retail stores, gas stations, and car dealerships.
“To satisfy customers, businesses must ensure restrooms are consistently stocked, clean, dry, and functioning,” said Dave Mesko, Senior Director of Marketing at Cintas.
What Tasks Are on the List to Keep a Commercial Bathroom Clean?
There are a number of areas that require special cleaning in a commercial bathroom due to the number of hourly touchpoints. These are the bathroom stalls, hand dryers, walls, toilets, sinks, dispensers, locker rooms, showers, urinals, floors, and mirrors.
A reputable commercial bathroom cleaning service will mop the floors with disinfectant, clean and sanitize the fixtures, shine the mirrors, polish bright stainless steel fixtures, empty and clean waste receptacles, clean ceiling fans and vents, remove mold and any other unsightly stains. Ask the service if it uses non-abrasive cleaning products so that your furniture is not scratched. Check to ensure that its cleaning products meet EPA standards, are biodegradable, and do not emit harmful fumes or irritants.
How Often Does a Business Need to Clean a Bathroom?
How often to hire a commercial bathroom cleaning service depends on the type of business you run. The more traffic you encounter at your facility will dictate how often a crew needs to visit and clean.
If you operate a restaurant or office building, your bathroom will need to be cleaned often. Churches or other facilities that welcome visitors for a day or two per week might need fewer visits. If you run a daycare facility or school where children use the restroom, you’ll need a deep clean. An outsourced service will let you know how often they are needed to reduce the risk of illness among your staff and customers.
Internal or Outsource?
Business owners will surely need to discuss the pros and cons of employing an internal team to clean the bathroom or outsourcing the job to a commercial bathroom cleaning service. One top consideration is staffing. Do you have a dedicated janitorial team to adequately clean all of the bathrooms in the building? How much will the supplies cost? Who will oversee the team?
By hiring an outsourced expert firm, you’ll remove the extra care of thinking about buying janitorial equipment and supplies and setting up a cleaning schedule. Instead, you’ll have a maintenance team that will provide air care products regularly and hand soap and dispensers will be cleaned and refilled weekly.
An outsourced team of experts will use scientifically proven cleaning solutions to reduce dangerous bacteria in your restroom facilities. Effective cleaning products change often and a commercial bathroom cleaning service will ensure that the right products are being used to produce a clean and pristine facility. No longer will you be tasked to purchase expensive cleaning supplies and other restroom maintenance products.
No matter what type of facility you operate, your employees and visitors will thank you for keeping the bathroom clean. It is the epicenter of viruses, germs, and diseases. An outsourced firm can visit full- or part-time, be flexible in their hours visiting your company during the day or at night.
If you are seeking a reputable commercial bathroom cleaning service with a commitment to cleanliness, take a close look at DTK Facility Services. This Houston-based firm was founded in 1996 and today provides services at over 500 locations with an expert force of over 1,515 employees. Call DTK Facility Services to get a quote today.