June 01, 2021
4 Reasons Routine Floor Care is Important for Your Business
Keeping floors clean and maintained is a big job—especially in commercial settings.
Commercial floor care service providers and cleaning teams tackle hundreds of thousands to millions of square feet of flooring each week.
It can feel like a mundane job, but it is worth the time and effort as routine commercial floor care can have a positive impact on your business in many ways.
Flooring is one of the largest high-touch surfaces in a building, and arguably one of the dirtiest, depending on industry and foot traffic.
Not only that but the dust and debris that is tracked inside on shoes can be brushed into the air and circulated throughout a building—wreaking havoc on the overall health of an indoor environment.
The shift to keeping indoor spaces cleaned for the health and safety of anyone who enters a building has only highlighted the importance of cleaning—causing the frequency and efficiency of cleaning to be an even higher priority.
“The condition of your flooring is representative of your company’s professionalism, attention to detail, and level of cleanliness” according to OpenWorks.
Your floors represent your business, ideals, and reputation—ensuring you have spotless floors is necessary for a positive perception. And an expectation for most.
On top of playing a significant role in the total health of an indoor space and the perception of your business, regular floor maintenance is key to extending the life of your flooring—which is why it is so important to develop a consistent and detailed floor care routine. Weekly cleaning is not enough to extend the life of your floors—and certainly scheduling floor care as a once or twice-a-year project will have many downsides.
A) It is important to note that prevention is key to extending the life of flooring.
Using floor mats outside every entryway is the first line of defense. Making sure you have a quality door mat that will capture, dirt, grit, oils, grease, asphalt, driveway sealer and other chemicals is an essential first step to stopping these contaminants from being tracked throughout your building.
B) Daily cleaning is recommended in most cases, especially in areas where there is high foot traffic.
Developing a floor cleaning routine that consists of daily vacuuming and scrubbing will help prolong the life of your floors, whereas scheduling cleaning once a month or less can directly contribute to rapidly deteriorating flooring, an increase in chances of injury related to poor floor care, and a building that does not exude professionalism.
This can hurt the reputation of your business.
Not only that but leaving dirt and debris on floors for extended periods can contribute to the breakdown of fibers in carpets and can cause visible wear on many types of hard flooring surfaces, and it can contribute to an unhealthy indoor environment for employees and others using the space.
Using effective floor cleaning equipment, like those by ICE Cobotics is an efficient way to stay on top of the floor cleaning routine.
ICE Cobotics equipment is offered through an all-inclusive subscription service and comes with i-SYNERGY fleet management software which is designed to help BSCs and managers track their equipment, operators, time of use, and total square footage cleaned.
Access to this data can help BSCs and managers keep track of cleaning progress and a confirmed clean.
C) Spot cleaning is essential to preserving flooring and a routine floor care plan can help to ensure that any spills are taken care of immediately.
When your cleaning team is regularly maintaining floors, they can spot spills or leaks faster, and clean up and treat the issue before permanent damage is done.
Managing liquids on floors is key when it comes to extending the life of flooring.
The longer spills sit, the more likely it is for hard flooring to become warped or to peel, and with carpeting this can lead to permanent staining—or stains that take much longer to remove—causing a member of the cleaning team to spend an extended amount of time on one spot.
Routine floor maintenance can save you time, and money, and help save resources from landfills.
Time: keeping floors properly cleaned does take time, but it is time well spent. When your staff is routinely inspecting and cleaning, it is more likely that any cracks or stains will be noticed immediately.
Dealing with these types of issues right away can save a lot of time overall. It can be time-consuming and costly to discover stains, chips, cracks, or peeling floors when the problem has sat for too long, or worse yet when the issue has led to an unintended injury, which could result in lawsuits.
Money: new flooring is expensive—a proper floor care routine can extend the life of your flooring and help prevent liabilities due to accidents related to deteriorating floors.
“Flooring is expensive. Taking proper care of your facility’s floors will undoubtedly save your business money long-term.” --OpenWorks
Resources: By maintaining your floors and extending their life, you are saving resources from being sent to the landfill, saving your business the resources it would take to replace flooring, and aiding in a more sustainable business practice.
“Try to scrub/recoat more often and strip/recoat less often since it reduces the amount of pollutants into the water system.”
Your cleaning team is already spread thin. Cleaning and maintenance workers are in demand, the industry faces high turnover rates, and cleaning expectations are increasing.
Developing a detailed and well-communicated floor care routine/ plan can also have a positive impact on staff.
Not only will they know what to expect each day, but routine cleaning is much less labor intensive than project cleaning—which can be labor intensive, time-consuming, and unpredictable.
Routine floor care allows your staff to know what to expect each day, can help develop a clear system with the right tools and products, helps to avoid confusion with cleaning chemicals or machine operation, and will allow staff to more regularly spot discrepancies should they occur.
As cleaning for health and safety becomes more important and businesses work toward WELL Building standards, it will be increasingly important to think of the overall health of your business—this includes the impact on people using the building each day.
Clean floors are a direct contributor to indoor health and air quality. Routine cleaning helps to eliminate the number of contaminants that are tracked through buildings, kicked up into the air, and ultimately affect indoor air quality and employee health.
Using floor cleaning equipment like Cobi 18, an autonomous floor scrubber by ICE Cobotics, is a great way to make sure floor cleaning is done consistently, helping to keep dirt and debris from being brushed back into the air. This way, not only are your floors cleaned with precise consistency, but the air is a little cleaner too.
Reach out to our Automation Experts for more information on how we can help with your routine cleaning plan or autonomous solutions.
Automation can help business owners empower their staff, leading to better work environments and more successful employees.
To address the growth of the cleaning industry in addition to combating labor issues, commercial cleaners are relying on robots.
Find out which compact autonomous floor scrubbers are having the biggest impact on the commercial cleaning industry.
Ready to Explore Automation? Talk to an Automation Expert