The Ultimate Office Cleaning & Maintenance Checklist

In the corporate world, appearance plays a significant role in how current and potential customers perceive your business. Appearance is not only about how your employees dress but also how organized and well-kept your office space is. An untidy office can reflect poorly on your brand, as well as negatively impact your employees’ health and productivity.

In order to maintain and clean offices effectively, businesses need to adopt a systematic approach. This can be done by either outsourcing an office cleaning agency or employing in-house office cleaners. That said, despite the rise in office cleaning agencies, a study revealed that 46.42 percent of facility managers surveyed do not consider outsourcing cleaning and janitorial services an option.

Looking to implement a structured office cleaning and maintenance schedule? In this article, we provide you with the ultimate office cleaning and maintenance checklist — plus a few tips and tricks for tidying your office space.

Office cleaning and maintenance checklist

Creating an office cleaning and maintenance checklist is the first step to having a tidy and well-organized working environment. The ideal checklist should be divided into daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal (or quarterly) cleaning tasks.

Daily office cleaning checklist

Daily cleaning and maintenance ensure that the office stays tidy, neat, and functional. This includes all areas of the office that require regular cleaning.

Daily tasks include:

• Wiping kitchen appliances, sinks, and surfaces
• Washing and putting away dishes
• Moping the kitchen floor
• Cleaning common areas, such as the reception room and washrooms
• Wiping common chairs and tables
• Clearing clutter and organizing loose items, such as magazines or any paperwork in the reception room
• Moping private offices and conference rooms
• Dusting desks, monitors, keyboards, printers, and other computer equipment
• Disinfecting counters, hand dryers, door handles, sinks, and paper towel holders
• Restocking paper towels, toilet paper, hand wash, and other supplies
• Vacuuming floors and rugs
• Collecting trash and dishes from the common area and private offices/desks
• Emptying trash and recycling bins and replacing liners

Weekly office cleaning checklist

Weekly cleaning and maintenance focuses on larger jobs and surfaces and is most effective when you plan a regular time to complete these tasks. It requires communication with colleagues to know what to expect and when. Tasks like emptying the refrigerator and deep cleaning can inconvenience employees and restrict their usage of the office space, so they should not come as a surprise!

Weekly cleaning tasks include:

• Emptying the refrigerator and cleaning out old food
• Cleaning the microwave
• Shinning stainless steel surfaces and fixtures
• Cleaning baseboards, stalls, and walls
• Dusting vents, handrails, picture frames, sills, windows, shelves, and blinds
• Cleaning outside of trashcans and recycle bins
• Cleaning doors, glass walls, and windows

Monthly office cleaning checklist

Monthly cleaning and maintenance tasks focus on hard-to-reach areas involving larger undertakings.

Areas that require monthly cleaning include:

• Deep cleaning tiles and grouts
• Vacuuming vents and circular fans
• Vacuuming carpets and rugs
• Cleaning upholstery
• Dusting high surfaces, usually done top to bottom
• Buffing and polishing hardwood floors

Quarterly checklist

Quarterly cleaning tasks include:

• Buffing and polishing floors
• Deep cleaning carpets
• Deep cleaning blinds, drapes, and upholstery
• Shredding and discarding outdated and sensitive documents

Quarterly office cleaning also involves seasonal specialty tasks like cleaning the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) vents before the winter heating or the summer air conditioning season.

Office Cleaning & Maintenance Tips and Tricks

Group your cleaning tasks

Cleaning frequency varies from one area to another within your office space. It also varies based on the size of your office space — bigger offices will usually be cleaned a bit more frequently due to a higher number of employees passing through. A well-defined and laid-out cleaning schedule can make all the difference between a drab, untidy office and a clean, healthy, and productive one.

Grouping cleaning tasks allows you to set up an efficient schedule that works for your cleaning team and ensures you cover all the areas in your office. Furthermore, you can identify and prioritize the areas that need frequent cleaning and assign duties and responsibilities accordingly.

To avoid interruptions in the workplace, make sure your office cleaning typically takes place after office hours. Noisy cleaning activities, such as loud vacuuming, can hurt productivity — and even be detrimental to sales if your employees are on the phone with clients.

However, doing all the cleaning tasks after hours may not be possible. Some workplaces, like manufacturing facilities, operate on a 24-hour basis. This is why it is critical to schedule and group cleaning tasks into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly duties.

Set clear roles for your cleaning team

Building a good relationship with your cleaning team, whether outsourced or in-house, is vital. To do this, communicate clearly and set defined roles, responsibilities, requirements, and priorities for them.

Floor plans can vary greatly from office to office. The first step is to orient your cleaning staff and get them familiar with your space. Plan for a walk-through, discuss areas that need special attention, agree on a task list, and create a final schedule.

It is also vital that you listen to their suggestions and views. If you are working with a cleaning agency, they could have more experience and expertise in relevant matters. Incorporate their opinions and create the cleaning schedule together.

Keep in mind that maintaining a clean office space does not end with creating a schedule. You should regularly follow up to see whether the program meets its goals. Meet with your cleaning team regularly to understand their challenges and see whether everyone is doing their part. Update the team on any special events or changes to the schedule that might require an updated schedule.

Provide all the necessary cleaning equipment and supplies

Cleaners’ Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) includes any unique clothing or items your cleaning team wears to minimize the exposure to hazards that could cause health issues and injuries.

PPE is essential in helping cleaning staff avoid potential hazards from cleaning supplies, such as bleach, or cleaning tasks, such as mopping slippery floors. The employer has to consider a form of protection in compliance with legislation and common-sense measures, such as providing gloves for those dealing with bleaches.

The general cleaning PPE includes:

• Aprons to protect workers from spillages
• Gloves to protect hands from cleaning substances and prevent germs and bacteria from people’s hands
• Hair ties or nets for those with long hair
• Masks to avoid fumes
• Goggles to protect the eyes
• Shoe covers or boots to protect the feet while cleaning

Apart from PPE, you should also provide cleaning supplies, such as detergents, mops, bleaches, scrubbing brushes, and other items your staff needs to perform their duties effectively.

Create a maintenance schedule

Effective maintenance planning is critical for any office space. Failure to conduct regular maintenance can result in substantial repair costs.

Offices should budget for a maintenance strategy that covers the following areas:

• Reactive maintenance: Also known as run-to-failure maintenance, it involves performing maintenance on systems and equipment once they break down. In the office environment, reactive maintenance can be performed on items like furniture and office equipment.
• Preventive maintenance: This is the most popular strategy and uses two approaches; time-based and usage-based. For example, time-based preventive maintenance could be performed on HVAC equipment, and you can change the filters every two months. As for usage-based maintenance, you can use it for portable appliance testing — for instance, you can test the safety of your portable electrical appliances after X amount of working hours.
• Risk-based maintenance: This strategy involves determining and assessing the risk of an event occurring, whether catastrophic failure or minor repair, to determine maintenance priorities. You can use this approach around the office for optimization of your maintenance costs — after you collect data on your office equipment and systems, evaluate the risks of their failure, and the consequences of a failure, you’ll have a much better picture of what equipment you need to prioritize for maintenance.
• Predictive maintenance: This strategy involves using IoT devices and technology to gather data and facilitate maintenance teams and office managers in identifying and solving problems early. One great example of predictive maintenance implementation is HVAC systems — when you can predict the time of failure, you avoid shutting down your office while waiting for repairs to be finished.

Final word

A tidy, clean, and well-organized office space is essential in creating the perfect first impression on your visitors. A clean, functioning office space works wonders for your brand and the overall well-being of your staff. However, you can only achieve this by creating an effective office cleaning and maintenance checklist!