Five questions to ask before you hire an office cleaner

Hiring a cleaner looks like a simple decision until you are holding two quotes that are within a few dollars of each other and have no idea which one is better. The price is the easiest thing to compare and the least useful. These five questions are harder to answer and tell you far more.

Ask them of anyone you are considering, including us.

Who is actually coming into the building?

You are giving someone keys, an alarm code, and unsupervised access to a floor full of laptops. It is reasonable to ask who that person is.

• Are the cleaners employees, or subcontractors?
• Will it be the same people each visit, or whoever is available?
• How are keys, fobs and alarm codes stored and handed over?
• What happens to your access when someone leaves the company?

There is no single right answer. Plenty of good companies use subcontractors. What matters is that they can tell you without hesitating.

What exactly is on the list?

Most disputes about cleaning are not about quality. They are about scope: you assumed something was included and it was not.

Ask for the scope of work in writing, and ask specifically which tasks are every visit and which are periodic. Interior glass, carpet extraction, hard floor maintenance and appliance interiors are the usual candidates for periodic work, and they are the usual sources of surprise.

Then ask the more useful question: what is explicitly excluded?

What happens when something gets missed?

Something will get missed. The difference between cleaners is what happens next.

• Who do you contact, and how?
• How quickly do they respond, and is that written down anywhere?
• Will they come back and put it right, or does it wait for the next visit?

A company that has thought about this will have an answer ready. A company that has not will tell you it does not happen.

What are you insured for?

Ask for certificates rather than assurances. In British Columbia that usually means commercial general liability, and WorkSafeBC coverage for anyone working on your premises. If a cleaner is injured in your office, you want to know whose problem that is before it happens rather than after.

What does the price actually cover?

Two quotes can differ by a third and still describe the same work, because one includes things the other bills separately.

• Are consumables included, or charged on top?
• Whose equipment and products, and are you paying for them?
• Is after-hours or weekend access priced differently?
• What triggers a price change, and how much notice do you get?

None of this requires you to know anything about cleaning. It requires the company to be specific, and the ones that cannot be specific are telling you something useful.

If you want to put these questions to us, we are happy to answer them in writing.