How Cleaning Teams Can Improve Productivity

Key Takeways

• Labor savings should focus on making each available labor hour more productive, not simply reducing staff or demanding faster work.  
• Workloading helps managers identify where time can be saved and intentionally redeploy that capacity to higher-value cleaning needs. 
• Combining mechanization, better processes, reduced unnecessary movement, and demand-based cleaning can improve productivity while maintaining or improving service quality. 

By Keith Schneringer 

The cleaning industry has no shortage of labor-saving products. Autonomous equipment, battery-powered technology, advanced cleaning chemistry, high-capacity dispensing systems, and IoT-connected smart dispensers, devices, and management platforms all promise, in one way or another, to help cleaning teams become more productive. 

Please don’t get me wrong. Each of these solutions can and do deliver meaningful results. But from my perspective, finding meaningful labor savings in a cleaning operation cannot be achieved by only focusing on incorporating one labor-saving product at a time. 

For facility cleaning managers, custodial leaders, and building service contractors alike, managing labor is a primary focus since labor costs are the largest expenditure for a cleaning budget, and recruiting and retaining employees can be difficult. Meanwhile, no matter how well staffed a cleaning operation is, expectations for cleanliness, appearance, health, and safety continue to grow. 

When times get tough, the natural response is to look for a “magic bullet” to try to solve all these challenges, and then to ultimately end up making cuts to staff to save on labor expenses and meet the ever-shrinking budget demands. Sound familiar? 

But what if instead of thinking of ways to “save” on labor, we began to rethink how that labor is actually being used? I would propose that “labor saving” should not just mean continually asking cleaning professionals to work faster. And it shouldn’t automatically mean reducing headcounts either. 

“Labor saving” should mean designing the work so available labor can produce the greatest possible value. 

Understand the Workload 

Workloading provides a structured way to connect cleaning tasks and frequencies with the labor required to perform them. 

Rather than beginning with historical staffing levels such as “we have always cleaned this building with 12 people, so we need 12 people”, a workload-based approach starts with a scope of work that catalogs all the cleaning tasks and associated frequencies. What needs to be cleaned? How frequently? How long should those tasks take? What service level is required? And how many labor hours are necessary to deliver it? 

Workloading becomes particularly valuable when evaluating labor-saving improvements. Suppose a different process, tool, or piece of equipment reduces a repetitive task by six minutes. Again, six minutes may not sound transformational. But if that task occurs 40 times each day, the organization has potentially created four hours of additional labor capacity daily. 

Workloading helps managers see those hours not simply as “savings,” but as a capacity that can be intentionally redeployed. Perhaps the time savings can reduce overtime or help absorb the impact of an open position. It might allow employees to perform periodic or detail cleaning that has routinely been deferred. It could support higher service frequencies in heavily used restrooms and entrances, or it could create more capacity to respond to unexpected needs. 

This is why workloading should not be viewed simply as an exercise for determining how many employees are required, or how many might be removed. Used effectively, it is a management tool for aligning tasks, frequencies, productivity rates, and service expectations with available labor. 

Workloading also provides an important baseline for evaluating proposed changes. Before introducing a new process, managers can measure existing labor requirements and cleaning outcomes. After the change, they can measure both again. 

Did the promised productivity improvement occur? Was labor actually saved, or was it simply shifted to another part of the process? Was time reduced at the expense of quality? Or did the organization genuinely create additional capacity while maintaining or improving the desired result? Those questions help distinguish demonstrated labor savings from assumed labor savings. 

Mechanize Manual Tasks 

One of the most direct ways to improve cleaning productivity is to replace appropriate manual cleaning tasks with mechanized alternatives. Importantly, mechanization is no longer limited to large, open corridors or warehouses. Smaller and more maneuverable machines have expanded the types of spaces where mechanical cleaning is practical, including restrooms, classrooms, retail spaces, healthcare environments, and congested areas. 

Consider vacuuming. Backpack vacuums can reduce the time employees spend repositioning equipment and navigating furniture compared with some traditional upright or canister systems. Wide-area vacuums can improve productivity in large, carpeted spaces when compared with other vacuuming options. 

The goal is not to mechanize every task. Instead, managers should identify repetitive activities where employees spend significant amounts of time performing work that equipment could accomplish faster. 

Robotic cleaning equipment is becoming increasingly relevant to facility operations, particularly for repetitive tasks in large spaces. Autonomous floor scrubbers, for example, can clean designated areas while employees focus on detailed work that requires human judgment. Rather than viewing robotics simply as a replacement for labor, managers can consider how automation changes the allocation of labor. 

Imagine an employee responsible for a large public area. If an autonomous machine handles routine floor scrubbing while the employee cleans touchpoints, edges, glass, restrooms, or other detail areas, two types of work can effectively happen at the same time. That can be especially valuable when vacancies make it difficult to complete all required tasks during a shift. 

Automation does require careful evaluation. Facilities cleaning managers and building service contractors must consider traffic patterns, obstacles, maintenance, training, machine utilization, and overall return on investment. A robot sitting unused in a storage room saves no labor. The strongest applications are typically those involving predictable, repetitive tasks where equipment can operate consistently. 

Making Things Easier 

Walking is necessary in virtually every cleaning operation. However excessive walking is a waste and represents an opportunity for process improvement. When employees repeatedly return to a custodial closet for liners, cleaning chemicals, paper products, microfiber, or other supplies, productive cleaning time disappears. 

Well-designed custodial carts can help employees carry the tools and consumables required for an entire route. Managers should configure carts around actual cleaning assignments rather than simply loading them with every available product. 

Facility layout matters as well. Strategically located supply points can reduce travel time in larger buildings. Standardizing where products are stored can prevent employees from wasting time searching for supplies. 

Perhaps the most powerful laborsaving strategy is avoiding work that does not need to be performed. Traditional cleaning schedules often assume that every space requires the same service at the same frequency. Actual building usage may tell a different story. 

Occupancy sensors, restroom traffic counters, connected dispensers, and facility-management platforms can provide information about how spaces are being used. A restroom experiencing heavy traffic may require immediate attention, while another restroom on the same scheduled route may have barely been used. This creates opportunities for demand-based cleaning. 

Instead of servicing an area simply because the schedule says it is time, teams can direct resources toward spaces that require attention. The result can be better service where occupants need it most without adding labor hours. 

Even without sophisticated technology, managers can begin applying this principle by studying traffic patterns, event schedules, occupancy levels, and service requests. 

Standardize Processes 

Technology cannot compensate for an inefficient cleaning process. Two employees performing the same task in completely different ways will often produce different results in different amounts of time. Standard operating procedures can establish the most efficient sequence for completing common tasks while maintaining required cleaning standards. 

Training should address more than what to clean. Employees should understand the most efficient order of operations, how much product to use, which tools are appropriate, and how to avoid unnecessary rework. 

For example, cleaning from high surfaces to low surfaces helps prevent employees from re-cleaning areas contaminated by falling dust. Working systematically around a room can reduce unnecessary movement. Allowing appropriate chemical dwell time can reduce excessive scrubbing. 

Managers should also seek feedback from frontline employees. The people performing cleaning tasks every day often recognize inefficient processes before anyone else does. They may know which cart is difficult to maneuver, which supply location adds unnecessary walking, or which cleaning process routinely creates rework. 

Combine a thoughtful cleaning process with some of the quality “laborsaving” cleaning products and you will begin to see great results. Because when it comes to cleaning products, purchase price alone can provide an incomplete picture of total cleaning cost. 

A product or process with a lower acquisition cost may ultimately require more preparation, additional applications, greater physical effort, and/or more employee time. The better measure is not necessarily the cost of the product, but the total cost of achieving the required cleaning outcome. 

This mindset shifts the focus from purchasing individual products to examining the entire process and how those products fit within it. 

For example, if a new system saves eight minutes per restroom and 30 restrooms are serviced each day, the potential labor savings equal four hours per day. Those numbers provide a much more meaningful basis for evaluating an investment than the purchase price alone. 

Managers should also look beyond speed. A solution that reduces physical strain, improves consistency, lowers training requirements, or decreases rework can create value even when the time savings are modest. 

Better Use of Labor 

Laborsaving cleaning should not mean forcing employees to move faster. Sustainable productivity comes from removing inefficiency from the work itself. 

That might mean replacing a mop with a compact scrubber, moving to a chemical dilution control system, reorganizing custodial carts, using occupancy data to adjust service frequencies, or assigning repetitive floor cleaning to autonomous equipment. 

Often, the greatest gains come from combining several relatively small improvements. 

For facility cleaning managers and building service contractors facing persistent labor challenges, the question is no longer simply, “How many people do we need to clean this building?” A more useful question is, “How can we make every available labor hour as productive as possible?” 

Organizations that continuously evaluate their cleaning processes through that lens can improve productivity while supporting employees, controlling costs, and maintaining the level of cleanliness building occupants expect. 

Keith Schneringer has been in the sanitary supply industry since 1990 and is currently the Senior Director of Marketing Jan/San + Sustainability for Imperial Brady, a specialized distributor and solution provider in facility care, foodservice, and industrial packaging. In his current role, Keith is responsible for marketing to the jan/san and facility care industry, for developing vertical-market-specific programs to better assist customers, and for leading the company's sustainability initiatives. Before assuming his current responsibilities, he worked as an account consultant, sales manager, marketing manager, and director of channel marketing + sustainability for WAXIE Sanitary Supply.