Employees in the UK on average spend 13 hours of their working lives each year cleaning or tidying their office.
This is according to new research carried out by Furniture123.co.uk, which found that the average worker in Britain spends three minutes cleaning their workspace every day, which equates to 13 hours of time that they could have been spending on something more productive over the course of a year.
What cleaning tasks are office workers being asked to do?
The most common task that office workers were asked to carry out was cleaning their desk, with 85 per cent required to do this by their boss at least once a week.
Meanwhile, 50 per cent of respondents to the survey said they were regularly asked to clean their workplace’s communal kitchen or food preparation areas each week, while others were expected to vacuum their office on a weekly basis.
This was despite 85 per cent of those questioned reporting that their company employed a professional cleaning service, which suggests that some are not meeting expectations or managers are not being clear enough about the jobs they expect the cleaners to take responsibility for.
There were also some more unusual housekeeping tasks that employees reported being asked to do, with 15 per cent having to clean the office’s shared bathroom once a week and almost one-fifth revealing that they were expected to tend to plants in their workplace.
It was also found that people working in marketing were the most likely to be asked to clean their workspace, spending a total of 17 hours on this each year. In contrast, financial services workers spent the equivalent of just nine hours a year on cleaning tasks. This could be due to these firms spending more on professional cleaners or staff in this industry being busier and not having as much time to do these tasks for themselves.
Mark Kelly, marketing manager at Furniture123.co.uk, commented: “It is really interesting to see how many British workers are being asked to carry out cleaning tasks by their employers.
“It’s fair enough for employers to ask their staff to keep their office or workplace tidy and do their best to limit the amount of cleaning required, but it’s likely in most cases to be more cost-effective in the long run to hire a professional cleaner to carry out tasks such as vacuuming and leave workers to do the job they are hired to do.”
Hiring a commercial cleaner could boost workers’ productivity
At Top Commercial Cleaning London, our professional commercial cleaners are happy to clean desks, office spaces, kitchen areas and bathrooms, as long as you let us know which tasks you’d like us to take responsibility for.
Every job will be completed to the highest possible standard by our experienced cleaning team, leaving office workers with more time to spend concentrating on tasks that will benefit the wider business and help it to grow.
Working in a cleaner, tidier environment could also help them to feel more motivated and productive, particularly if they don’t keep having to stop to carry out cleaning tasks that aren’t part of their job description.
Source: http://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/news/half-uk-workers-add-cleaning-office-working-day/
Source: http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/life/office-cleaning-517581
