After quite a long deliberation with yourself, you have finally decided to make cleaning as a long term career by starting your own cleaning service business. So what now? Of course, you cannot work and start the business alone. Moreover, as your business grows and matures, you would definitely need some helping hands to have the jobs done because you will have other responsibilities to perform like marketing and managing your business itself.

Since you are just starting, you can first choose and hire 2 to 3 employees with interests in cleaning, of course. With them, you can share your own cleaning style first hand. It is also important that you emphasize the importance of hygiene with the kind of work they have. And to practice this, you can provide them safety and hygienic gears such as masks, gloves, uniforms or aprons.

Familiarize them with the proper use and disposal cleaning aids and solutions. These solutions are usually toxic. It is always safety first. Techniques on carry out cleaning on any kinds of surfaces like wood, steal, and tiles should also be explained well to prevent damages on customer’s residence.

Then, these first set of employees will be the one to train additional hires in the future. You, on the other hand, will be more contained on improving marketing strategies and developing more efficient cleaning systems.

Cleaning companies have different approaches in performing their tasks – all of them are intended to maximize employee efficiency for bigger company profit. Cleaning companies usually use either zone cleaning or team cleaning in their business approach. The choice will all depend on the nature of the place to be cleaned and the kind of employees the cleaning service has.

First, we have to differentiate between zone cleaning and team cleaning. Zone cleaning involves the use of a single employee to do all the cleaning tasks in a particular area of a building – a zone. The zone could be a specific floor of the building which an employee has to take care of, an area that the employee may consider to be “his own”. Said employee will get to be familiar with all the aspects of the area he is assigned to, knowing the ins and outs, and developing a deep sense of responsibility. It will also minimize security problems as there will be only one person who will have access to that particular zone of the building during cleaning time. The common problem in the cleaning business – boredom, will be eliminated as the cleaner assigned to a particular area will have a variety of tasks to perform.

Team cleaning, on the other hand, identifies the different tasks to be performed in cleaning a building and assigned those tasks to different groups or employees. Each employee, or group of employees, will have to perform only a single task for the entire building or cleaning area. Each group will go from one area to another doing their specific task while another group will follow doing a different one. Cleaning tasks in zone cleaning are normally broken down as follows:

• Light Duty – This involves the tasks of emptying trash cans, dusting, and spot cleaning. The members of the team will go from room to room doing only this particular duty.

• Vacuum Team – The team’s only function is to vacuum carpets and hard floors.

• Restroom Cleaners – They clean, sanitize and restock restroom supplies.

• Utility team – They clean lobbies, spot clean glasses, scrub and mop hard floors, and take out trash to dumpsters.

One advantage of team cleaning is the specialization involved. An employee who is doing the same task over and over again becomes a sort of specialist in that given field. The employee becomes very skilled and efficient in the task assigned to him, saving on man hour needed to finish a particular job. This will translate to bigger profit for the cleaning business. There will be no need of training each employee on all aspects of cleaning – a task that could both be time consuming and expensive.

But before you make your decision on whether to use zone cleaning or team cleaning, you first have to take a close look at the building to be cleaned. One building is different from another; they have different needs and therefore different cleaning approaches. Use a cleaning approach that will best suit the needs and conditions of the building to be cleaned.

See: Start a cleaning service