Commercial Covid Cleaning in Mesa Arizona

12/9/2020 (Permalink)

Commercial Covid-19 Cleaning Process

With businesses being open and shut down repeatedly we have gotten a lot of calls from businesses in the Mesa AZ area asking us for our advice on best practices for maintaining an environment that is safe for their employees and customers/clients. So, we thought we would create a blog post to use as a tool for other businesses in the area who had similar questions.

The CDC recommends the following general steps to provide a safe environment for your employees and customers/clients.

1. Develop Your Plan
2. Implement You Plan
3. Maintain and Revise Your Plan

These ideas may seem a little elementary, but, it’s always a good idea to start with the basics for a good foundation. 

Developing Your COVID-19 Cleaning Plan

The first thing you need to do is to determine what areas need to be cleaned and how often they need to be cleaned. Areas that are not occupied for 7 days or more only need occasional routine cleaning. Areas of high traffic, especially high touch traffic, should be cleaned daily, often multiple times a day. You will also want to consider how often outside areas are used and how you will clean them.

Next you need to determine how you are going to clean those areas you have identified. Are you going to do a wipe down cleaning or a fog cleaning. There are advantages to both. Wipedown cleaning takes a little more time but you will get more chemical contact on those areas. Fogging takes less time and energy and also has the effect of disinfecting the air around the area being fogged. Also, will you have someone on your staff specifically tasked to make sure the cleaning is done or will you have an outside company like SERVPRO of North Central Mesa do the disinfectant cleaning for you? Ideally it should be a mix of both. For example, the staff cleaning high touch and traffic areas daily/multiple times a day, and have us come out once a week to do a thorough deep cleaning.

After identifying the areas being cleaned and how you are going to clean them, you need to determine what equipment and resources you are going to use for the cleaning. If your staff is going to be doing the cleaning you will want to make sure they have proper cleaning equipment (gloves, rags, disinfectant cleaning products.The Cleaning products you use should be EPA-Approved cleaners.) available to do the work. Rags and gloves are easy enough to source. For disinfectant cleaner, you can buy SERVPRO proprietary products on Amazon, or you can buy them directly from us and not pay shipping. If you are also going to have your employees do fogging, you will want to get an electrostatic sprayer as well. These can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over a thousand. Remember, you get what you pay for. You want to get one that will be reliable and last a good amount of time.

Your Cleaning Plan Implementation

As normal you will want to do routine cleaning of areas that get dirty in general. That part obviously hasn’t changed. You will want to consider how you will integrate your disinfectant cleaning for COVID into that schedule. You should consider whether your employees touch similar areas as other employees and how often. You will also want to consider how often your employees and clients/customers touch the same areas. That will help you determine which areas need to be cleaned most and least often. What areas of your business do you have the most traffic in? Those areas should receive the most attention and if there are not high touch surfaces in those areas, maybe you should just consider doing an occasional fogging of those areas.

You will want to make sure that there is a clear expectation as to who is responsible for making sure the cleaning is done as well as who will be doing the cleaning. Having roles specifically defined, as with any other part of your business, will help the process run more smoothly and will help to make sure that your plan is completed correctly and efficiently.

Make sure that employees are properly trained and understand the safety instructions on the cleaning labels. Also, make sure that employees are trained to use any fogging equipment properly to make sure areas are properly cleaned and to make sure that cleaning products are not being wasted. One of our technicians from SERVPRO of North Central Mesa can come by to do an initial training for your employees if requested.

Maintain and Revise

You will want to make sure you monitor cleaning efforts and evaluate them for effectiveness. Make sure to include employees in charge of overseeing the cleaning and performing the cleaning to get their feedback. You may also want to reach out to customers to ask their opinions. This has the added benefits of letting them know that you are doing the cleaning, that you value their opinion, and could help to identify areas of opportunity to improve your cleaning processes from an outside third party.

Here are some other suggestions to make sure your cleaning plan is properly maintained

1. Make sure new gloves are available for each new cleaning
2. Make sure clean rags are available to use for wipedown cleaning
3. Make sure the cleaning disinfectant product is properly stocked and available
4. Make sure that your electrostatic fogging machine is properly maintained on a regular basis
5. Post the cleaning protocols in an easily accessible place for all employees to see
6. Let clients/customers know about your cleaning protocols.

The last point may seem odd. But there are a couple of good reasons to do this. First, it lets your clients/customers know that the cleaning is happening. Your clients and customers want to know that they are going to be safe in your business. They will be more likely to work with you if they know that their health interests, and the health interests of your employees, are important to you. It could also make sure that the cleaning is being done. You know you have those clients or customers who will make a stink if they see something not being done that should be.

The question we get most often when talking to businesses about the cleaning protocols is how much it will cost the business to implement them. Well, my first question to them is, how much will it cost you not to implement them. Look, I get it. When you are running your business you are doing it to make a profit, hopefully a good profit. I have run several businesses in the past, so I totally get that. So, I would like to pose a few ideas to think of. 

1. How much would it cost the business if employees get sick because the protocols are not in place.
2. How much would it cost the business if clients and customers go elsewhere because they aren’t sure if they feel safe at your business.
3. If it costs you an extra $200 to $300 per week to implement the cleaning protocols, but as a result you either didn’t lose profit from the traffic you have from current clients and customers, or if you were to make an additional $500 per week from new clients and customers who feel safer at your business than your competitors. Would that be worth it to you?

Assessing those questions are all part of maintaining and revising your cleaning plan. I mentioned reaching out to your clients and customers. Creating an active cleaning protocol will also give you marketing material to work with on social media, in house, and don’t discount the effectiveness of snail mail marketing. Let customers know what you are doing. It gives you an opportunity to reach out to current and past customers without trying to sell them something while delivering a message that will make them more likely to want to work with you. 

Your current and prospective clients want to know information about the businesses they use taking this issue seriously. They will be happy to see marketing of this type come across their social feed on in the mailbox. Throw in a coupon to give them an opportunity to stop by and see the results of your cleaning efforts.

If you have questions or would like to know how much a one time or ongoing cleaning would cost on our side for your business, feel free to reach out to us. Call our Covid Cleaning line at (480) 568-4220 to talk with one of our experts. 

We look forward to working with you to help you keep your business clean and growing!