Building a Culture of Cleanliness in Your Facility and Workplace

As we accelerate the back to office phase of the post pandemic work, one thing office managers and facility managers have to worry about is the cleanliness of the workplace. Every smart facility and office manager know that they can’t do it alone, and it takes team work to make the dream work when it comes to keeping the workplace clean, productive and safe. But how do you even get started? How do you gey everyone to buy into the concept of a clean workplace, everyday, every hour. Well its simple, it starts with building a culture of cleanliness in your organization. 

I have been around the block for a long time, cleaning commercial buildings and facilties for over a decade including banks, hospitals, clinics, restaurants, office towers, warehouses, homeless shelters and more, and one thing I have noticed is that unless there is a culture of cleanliness in place, the space also looks disorganized, unsafe, unclean and there is generally low employee morale. Nobody likes to work in a dirty space, yet nobody really wants to take up responsibiltiy for cleaning the workplace either, until someone comes in and lays down the law.

Repeating to people to clean after themselves or embody best practices that make your commercial facility or workplace clean can be frustrating. One of the obvious reasons is that most times, you are dealing with adults, and the general assumption is that adults understand the benefits of a clean and organized workplace. Breaking news: Most adults are not organized and do not clean up after themselves. These adults are fully functioning adults and may include your CEO, CTO, and best salespeople. Bottom line, everyone can be messy. To have a clean workplace, you need to intentionally create a culture of cleanliness in your facility and workplace

Cleanliness as a culture does not happen overnight. It is a result of intentional programming, done over time until it is fully adopted by the majority in your organization. Just as you develop an organization that is safety oriented by developing a culture that values safety in the workplace, you must follow a similar model in developing a clean culture in your workplace. Okay, too much talk, let’s dive into 5 tips to build and foster a culture of cleanliness in your facility and workplace.

Making Cleaning a Priority:

People respond better to laid-down rules and regulations than to mere suggestions or casual office recommendations. Make it known as a matter of company policy that you expect the work area and general facility to be clean, and they there are consequences for making the facility unclean and disorganized. This includes not cleaning up after yourself in the washroom, dropping stuff in the stairways, or leaving your desk messy and in such a way that it makes the office unkempt. Laying down the law is one thing, though, people must see leadership live these values daily for them to follow along. This brings us to point number two. 

Making Sure Leadership Buys Into a Culture of Cleanliness in Your Facility and Workplace:

No workplace policy works unless leadership has bought in and leads by example. Imagine this, you have a dress code policy and leadership consistently violates that policy. What do you think happens over time? The rest of the folks will generally follow the same path, and you can’t really do anything about it. If you fire them, they have a case that they were mirroring the company’s leadership. 

The same is true for holding people to a high standard for cleaning and fostering a culture of cleanliness in your facility and workplace. If people see their leaders doing the right thing in terms of keeping the space clean and organized, they will naturally follow. It is simple maths, just like 2+2=4.

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Educate Employees on the Importance of a Clean Environment and Best Practices

You probably know the benefits of having breakfast in the morning, and this has somewhat encouraged you to consistently have breakfast. Same way you understand the importance of stopping at a red light, how it contributes to public safety and all. The point here is that people will respond more positively to a policy or regulation if they feel informed about it. Educating your team about the importance of a clean environment and how it benefits them by boosting their productivity, creating a safe work environment, and generally benefiting their mental health. 

The second part of the puzzle is to show them the best practices when it comes to general workplace hygiene. Just because someone is a good UX designer does not mean that they understand best cleaning and hygiene practices; at the very least, do not assume that they are pros and know exactly what to do. Take your time and develop a cleaning program that will help you maintain a clean workplace in 2025 and beyond.

To avoid repeating yourself each time and also risking missing important points when training new employees, I advise that you record your training sessions and share them routinely with your team. This allows for consistency in the messaging and also provides visual clues on how to do and what you expect. 

Having the right tools and supplies in place:

We recently bagged a contract to clean a commercial facility in downtown Toronto, and on our first day, we noticed that the washrooms did not have a dedicated toilet brush in each stall. It is simple details like that, that make it easy or hard to foster a clean community. Keep in mind, that during the proposal and negotiation stage, the facility manager had reiterated that the washrooms were a primary concern. 

Here is the deal, if you want people to buy into a culture of cleanliness, you have to provide them with the tools and resources to do so. If someone messed up the toilet and they wanted to clean up after themself, but there was no toilet brush or toilet cleaner, they simply can’t do any cleaning. This then creates a problem as everyone is suddenly disgusted in the washroom, they probably have to go to another floor or building to use the washroom. You loose productive hours over stuff like this. It also gives other people the guts to not clean up after themselves in other areas of the office (especially if they dont have the resources to do so). Another example is this: 20 employees work late past the hours of the cleaning and janitorial team, they spill stuff on the floor, but there is no mop or stuff for them to use to clean up after themselves that night? What happens is that by the time everyone shows up to work in the morning, they are meet with an eyesore and morale is instantly down, affecting productivity, there is also the small issue of general safety from stuff being spilled and client or customer turn-off. 

Bottom line, if you want people to buy into the culture of cleanliness in your workplace, you must provide the right tools and resources. 

Hire a Professional 5-Star Office Cleaning Service in Toronto: 

We will always shamelessly promote our commercial cleaning services to business in the Toronto area. While we pride ourselves in being the best in the business, the truth is that there is only so much your team can do daily to keep your space clean, and if you truly want to develop a culture of cleanliness in your facility and workplace, you will definitely need to hire the professionals to always make sure that your space is all world. You would not ask a pilot to make lunch for the 300 people on his flight, would you now? The answer is no, you would hire a professional catering company to do the job. Why? Well because they understand food preparation and food handling at scale.

The same thing goes with cleaning and hiring a professional 5-Star commercial cleaning company in Toronto, it saves you time and effort. Beyond that if you hire Daily Cleaning Services, we guarantee you of our determination to excellence and 5-star cleaning 24/7. For business in the Greater Toronto Area, contact us today for a free quote and let us be your partner in building a culture of cleanliness in your facilities and workplace.