Spruce up your new office space with these tips
So, you’re moving into a new office. There will be more space for your equipment, your employees will be able to enjoy their brand-new, larger break room, you can receive clients and host meetings in a grander conference room, everything sounds excellent… On paper. In reality, moving into a new office brings about a lot more hassles than one would think.
This is, of course, largely because most former tenants rarely tend to leave the premises in pristine condition before moving out. Of course, none of the issues would be severe enough to void their contract with the building owner, but they’d still be there and fixing them is entirely up to you and your team. Even if your predecessors were better-than-average and took extra care in picking up after themselves, you’ll still have to do quite a few touch-ups before you can relax in the office space that you dream of the night before.
Leased business premises come with a plethora of possible small quirks, ranging from hidden dusty cupboards and slightly clogged vents, all the way to cobwebby closets and window smears. And if you plan on receiving any sort of visitors, clients or potential business partners, there’s a lot of work ahead of you!
Who does the office cleaning?
To outsource or not to outsource?
Before you roll up your sleeves and grab the sponge, ask yourself the following question – how valuable is your time to you? Could you do more for your business from behind your desk, computer screen or phone? In nearly all cases, the answer should be firm and definitive “Yes!”. Well then, what about your employees? Surely, since you’re already paying them anyway, they shouldn’t mind doing a bit of clean-up… right?
Wrong.
Unless you’re paying your employees to clean, you can’t really expect any of them to be overly excited about the prospect of doing it. And you can’t really blame them here – it’s not in their job description.
Here are some pros and cons of hiring a dedicated cleaning company to handle your office clean-up versus doing it on your own (or asking your employees to do it).
- Experience – Hiring an established cleaning agency allows you to benefit from the entirety of their expertise, build over a multitude of years in the field. Even if, by some miracle, your employees are excited by the idea of spending their time on office cleaning duty, they just won’t have the know-how. This can put both your valuable office equipment and their own personal health and wellbeing at risk, and you don’t really want to deal with either of the possibilities.
- Expedient results – directly stemming from the above come the actual results of the office cleaning session. The more experience the cleaners have, the better the results will be. Choosing a professional cleaning company to handle your office cleaning usually comes with a guarantee of quality and experience.
- Employee Morale – Appreciating the contributions of your employees can go a long way towards keeping them motivated. Think of why you hired them. Did they go through the effort of acquiring their various skills and earning their fancy degrees just to end up cleaning your office space?
Of course, as a commercial cleaning company, pointing these things out can seem very biased of us. But we’re also speaking from experience. At the end of the day, the choice is all yours.
Regardless of which approach you choose after the initial clean-up procedure is complete, there are a few more things you can do to spruce up your new office, that will need your input.
Freshen up the air in your office
But the air vents have already been cleaned out, what more is there to do? Well, there’s a couple of tricks that you can apply here:
Open some windows
Depending on where your building is situated this may be an excellent idea or a rather bad one. If you are located in an area with low air pollution, you should simply consider keeping the window cleaner open as much as possible. If you’re in a major city with a lot of car traffic and other negative factors, keep the windows closed during peak times.
Get an organic air freshener
This tip will work regardless of any circumstances, and, best of all – it’s entirely eco-friendly! And while commercial air fresheners can definitely change the aroma in your office, most of the brands can have a negative impact on your health, especially if your employees are known to suffer from allergies. And that’s where our suggestion comes into play – get yourself a couple of lemons. Yes, that’s right – lemons. Simply slice them up into small pieces, put them in bowls and distribute them across your office. They’ll keep everything smelling nice and fresh, without any added toxicity.
Make sure that your break room is frequently maintained
Your employees are bound to spend some time in the break room every day. This can mean a lot of appliance use, with the potential of spills and stains, which can quickly devolve into nasty odours. The sooner these are taken care of, the fewer annoyances you’ll have to deal with down the line.
Keep your bathrooms clean
Yet another quite obvious odour source, the bathrooms have to be kept in pristine condition. And again, as with most cleaning tasks, we’d advise you to opt for professional assistance, as very few of your employees are likely to find appeal in the prospect of cleaning the office bathroom.
Invest in some floor mats
The more dust and dirt you keep out of your office, the better. This is doubly important for buildings with a lot of foot traffic. If, for example, you frequently receive visitors (or plan to), you will undoubtedly benefit from a couple of strategically placed floor mats.
© Top Commercial Cleaning London
