You never know when an important client, a surprise inspection, or even your boss’s boss might walk through the door. While you can’t predict unexpected visitors, you can make sure your office is always prepared for VIP visits.
Perform Daily Tidying of High-Traffic Areas
The lobby, front desk, entryway, hallways, and breakroom take the most abuse, with constant employee and visitor foot traffic. These areas also make first impressions on unannounced guests. Set your office up for impending surprise visits by incorporating tidying of key areas into staffers’ daily routines.
Assign team members informal daily tidy-up duties on a rotating basis. Have them hit hot spots like the lobby, front office spaces, coffee station, and communal worktables. Quick fine-tuning could include wiping surfaces, clearing clutter, taking out trash, sweeping, spot-mopping, or straightening chairs and décor. Handle random spills immediately to prevent stains.
Keep Restrooms and Kitchens Hygienically Clean
Restrooms and kitchens need the deepest cleaning focus. These spaces must meet high hygiene standards, especially with guests on the premises. But they still need maintenance tidying between thorough scrub downs.
The experts at All Pro Cleaning Systems, a company specializing in professional office cleaning services, recommend scheduling thorough restroom and kitchen sanitization at least once a week. This can be done by your internal custodial staff or a professional cleaning company. Additionally, they suggest implementing a daily bathroom checklist for your team. Assign someone to conduct regular walkthroughs—once or more per day—to check for low supplies, clean mirrors and sinks, mop up spills, and perform spot scrubbing as needed.
The same principle applies to office kitchen and break areas. Assign daily rotation for clearing food debris, quickly disinfecting sinks and wipe-downs, removing trash, and sweeping.
Do Nightly Straightening Sweeps and Trash Roundups
Before staff leave each evening, do walkthrough straightening sweeps of the office, culminating with a final trash roundup. While tidying hot spot areas daily helps, things still get progressively more disorganized and messier through the workday. So as the last employee leaves, walk the perimeter doing quick straightening.
Push chairs neatly back under desks, pick up random paper or office supply clutter, neatly arrange stacks and inboxes, wipe smudges or spills from desktops and conference tables, and square away things on credenzas and bookshelves. It makes coming back to a fresh start easier the next morning. Finish by collecting all trash bins for centralized disposal; leave nothing smelly overnight.
These end-of-day straightening sweeps supplement other daily, weekly, or intermittent tidying measures between scheduled deep cleaning. Doing final sweeps maintains your workspace’s constant preparedness for surprise guests walking in out of the blue.
Prioritize Visible Windows, Entry Glass, and Flooring
Filmy windows, smudgy glass entry doors, dingy window treatments, and dull floors negatively impact first impressions of unannounced visitors. So make glass surfaces, window coverings, and common area flooring a priority on your regular professional office cleaning schedule.
Hire office cleaning pros at least once a month to thoroughly clean all interior and exterior window and glass surfaces. Have them dust window treatments seasonally too. For flooring, seek floor waxing, buffing, scrubbing, pressure washing, and steam cleaning as recommended for your specific floor materials to keep them shining.
Conclusion
You can better prepare your office for unannounced VIP walk-throughs, including bosses’ superiors and prospective clients, by focusing cleaning regimens proactively. Have staff tidy high traffic spaces daily, while scheduling deep cleaning of restrooms, kitchens, floors, windows, and more regularly by office cleaning crews. Top it off with daily tidying sweeps and trash roundups for move-in ready status ongoing. Implementing these fundamental cleaning routines means your workplace always puts its best foot forward, able to pass surprise inspections and showcase your brand.
