Are you worried that your commercial cleaning crew might pose a security risk to your building? If so, you’re not alone. Ensuring cleaners maintain building security one of the biggest concerns our clients have about partnering with a janitorial company.
Commercial cleaners typically arrive after everyone has gone home for the night, and they’re the last ones out the door. That means they’re responsible for locking the doors and resetting the alarm. It can be difficult to entrust such an important task to a cleaning crew you’ve rarely, if ever, met face-to-face.
We’ve found that when it comes to ensuring cleaners maintain building, a little communication goes a long way. Here’s how we’ve solved the most common security issues our clients encounter.
Problem: False alarms
When a cleaning crew enters your building at night, sometimes they accidentally trigger the alarm. This most often happens with new cleaners who are unfamiliar with the disarming procedure. While it doesn’t necessarily pose a security threat, getting a late-night call from the alarm company is a problem you shouldn’t have to deal with.
Solution: Give your cleaning crew the alarm company’s phone number in case they accidentally trigger the alarm. We recommend posting the phone number on the alarm panel along with instructions for activating and deactivating the alarm. You don’t need to provide your secret code or grant us special authorization. Simply empowering our cleaners to contact the alarm company and let them know it’s a false alarm is usually enough to prevent you from getting a late-night phone call (or police visit).
Problem: Alarm wasn’t set
Since the cleaners are the last ones to leave building at night, it’s their job to set the alarm. But alarm systems are often complicated to operate, and issues with language, culture or education can further confuse matters. If your security alarm isn’t being set properly, it usually comes down to a simple language barrier.
Solution: The best solution is to record a video of the alarm instructions. Showing the activation procedure step by step allows us provide our crews with clear instructions they can understand regardless of their language proficiency or education level. You don’t have to include the access code in the video—we can provide that separately to those who need it—but having an instructional video on file helps us ensure your alarm gets set correctly every time.
Problem: Unlocked doors
If you have a large building or trade secrets to protect, there are probably doors within your facility that must remain locked at all times. When you grant a cleaning crew access to a restricted area of your building, you need assurance that they’ll remember to lock the door behind them. The key is to make sure they understand which doors need to stay locked.
Solution: We’ve developed a simple color-coding system our cleaners can easily follow. By marking the inside of door jambs with colored dot stickers used for coding paper files, you can signal to the cleaning crew whether to lock the door behind them.
- Red dot: The door remains locked.
- Blue dot: The door is left closed but not locked.
- White dot: The door remains as it was originally found.
It’s simple but remarkably effective!
Keeping your building secure is a top priority for you—and that means it’s a top priority for us. We’re always eager to work with our clients to find solutions to their biggest problems and pain points, like ensuring cleaners maintain building security. Whenever you have a concern, just let us know and we’ll find a way to solve it.