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Office dogs have gained popularity in recent years and their influences within the workplace are outstandingly positive. They can help socially awkward employees open up and talk to the rest of their colleagues, improve mental health in the workplace and increase work ethos. There is even a national day dedicated to it called “bring your dog to work day” in June, which aims to encourage businesses to reconsider their policies on animals being allowed into their premises.

Although our nation loves furry friends, they can also harbour dirt, which means if your office has not already got a cleaning contract then now might be the time to get one if you plan on recruiting any four-legged additions to your team. Here are some reasons why…

They can cause smells

Dogs do not understand that they need to use tissues when their chops become sticky. Even if yours is well-trained, you can still assume that drool, mucus, fur and other bodily fluids from your new employee can quickly seep into any carpeted areas of your office and fester if left uncleaned.

Your workers might be greeted by a stale, musky smell when they next enter the building, which is never pleasant to sit through from nine to five. A specialist commercial cleaner can ensure that all carpets are pristine after each day, meaning that your rooms will stay fresh in scent, no matter how many canine companions you have in the team.

They may carry parasites

Whilst on a walk, dogs are also known to contract parasites. External creatures such as fleas and ticks can drop off the mutt and take up residence in furniture and clothing – even on your human employees.

Anyone, including an animal, would be disgusted to work in an environment which houses bloodsucking insects, so make sure that a commercial cleaner is contracted to vacuum the facilities on a regular basis to avoid prolific infestations.

Hire a cleaner today

Whilst offices should always be spruced up, whether or not they house a dog or not, hiring professional cleaning services from Associated Cleaning Contractors is an especially important consideration before introducing a pet.

Contact us today for a quote on commercial office cleaning.

You may think that you can easily skip out on window cleaning and it will have little effect, but have you considered all of the potential benefits? In this blog, we will attempt to answer whether you need a window cleaning service for your commercial building.

Clean windows create a positive impression

If your commercial building welcomes customers, potential clients or business partners, you want them to gain a positive first impression of your building. After all, whether you are situated in a large building with hundreds of windows or only have a few, it is off-putting if they appear dirty, giving the building an unkept look. If you want to catch the eyes of passersby and make your commercial building reflect your amazing business, a window cleaning service is a must.

It keeps employees happy

Grimy windows or skylights will not encourage workers to appreciate the view from their desks. At best, it will look unattractive and at worst it could even block natural light from getting into the building. This could create a negative effect on workers who feel as if the area is not well looked after. Being able to enjoy the natural scenery and look out of a window is key to employee well-being, so a window cleaning service could be vital for improving the working environment of your commercial building.

Professional cleaners save time

Having read all of the above points, you may be considering giving window cleaning a go yourself, especially if you only have a few windows that are easily reachable. Consider the inevitable time it will take time to clean your commercial building’s windows if you want them to shine, especially if they are very dirty. This is time that could be spent developing your business while a professional cleaner does it for you, using the correct equipment and products to do a much more efficient job. A professional window cleaner makes a set of shiny, spotless windows easily and quickly achievable – even high-rise ones.

Window Cleaning Contracts

Most businesses could benefit from hiring a professional window cleaning service. If you feel your business could benefit from spotless window cleaning from ACC, which is affordable and flexible, get in touch for more information.

Over the past two years, when many employees worked from home, loneliness has been a common theme – and yet there is some real reluctance now that returning to the office is becoming more normal. So how can you encourage your workers to return to the office? We look at simple steps all employees can take.

Create a better working space

Offices used to be closed-off and separated, but now your space is much more likely to be light, bright and open plan. This can feel like a lot of change for employees who have become used to working in their dining rooms. So make sure the office is appealing. This means keeping windows clean and clear, providing ergonomic furniture, and introducing green plants, which can create a sense of being in touch with nature and brighten even darker corners.

Don’t reduce your cleaning

If there are fewer people in the office space, it can be tempting to slow down on your cleaning regime. This is actually the last thing you should do. Employing contract cleaners to provide office cleaning will keep the office looking attractive, and assuage the doubts of employees who are worried about their health in shared spaces.

Keep checking in

If you have employees who aren’t ready to come back to the office and can work from home, keep checking in with them to see if they would perhaps like to integrate into the office environment slowly. This could be popping in for a cup of tea, working on-site or a couple of hours, or just visiting to see how appealing the office can really be!

With these tips, you can create an office environment that your employees feel more comfortable in. Whether this is a part time proposition or they will be working hybrid for now, keeping the office clean and ready is vital.

Get in touch with Associated Cleaning Contractors to make sure that your office is sparkling clean for everyone – we offer the professional cleaning Manchester-based businesses trust, including window cleaning. Let us know how we can help you create a space your employees want to come back to.

What your organisation should think about when it comes to the debate on gender-neutral washrooms

Unisex washrooms may soon become the norm in our increasingly evolving and equal society. It’s an issue that can still cause some debate, but putting aside the moral arguments for and against gender-neutral bathrooms, there are some practical considerations that all organisations need to consider.

The realities and norms of single-sex toilets

In most countries, it is accepted that all washrooms in public buildings and most in the workplace will be segregated into ladies’ and gents’ facilities. But times are changing and we live in a much more inclusive society.

The non-binary and transgender communities in particular are challenging the need to divide washrooms by gender. A recent YouGov survey in conjunction with Stonewall concluded that nearly half of transgender people felt unsafe using single-sex public toilets.

Aside from the debates on rights and safety concerning transgender, non-binary and people who identify as either gender – which continues to rage – it’s also true that unisex washrooms remove the worry that parents or caregivers may have when taking children or less-abled people of a different sex to the toilet. It’s simply not acceptable for children or people with an impairment to have to visit a bathroom unaccompanied when they are probably unable to do so.

Covering all needs – the basics of gender-neutral bathrooms

Meeting the needs of all people who use a bathroom is becoming increasingly essential for all organisations. Each cubicle should be equipped with a toilet roll, a sanitary bag dispenser and a waste bin. It is also good practice to include a supply of toilet seat disinfectant and hand sanitiser. It matters not for whom the washroom is designated as these are practical basics that will promote hygiene and dignity for all.

But on top of the essentials, it’s also increasingly common for those who provide bathrooms and toilets to supply products that appeal to everyone. This should include air fresheners, fragrances, lotions and soaps.

There have been some high profile controversies when public buildings have adopted gender-neutral bathroom policies. Most commonly these have arisen through a lack of forethought and consultation. For example, there have been instances when schools have introduced unisex washrooms while leaving urinals in situ in facilities that girls have been expected to use.

Professional cleaning services for your washrooms

Whatever your thoughts on this subject, the fundamentals of washroom hygiene and cleanliness must apply to all. It’s no longer the case that the gents’ is accepted as a smelly place while the ladies’ always has a queue. Adopting policies that apply to all people will also assist those with hidden disabilities, cognitive issues and temporary impairments such as an injury.

Engaging the services of contract cleaners for your washrooms, restrooms, bathrooms and toilets can ensure that this happens. Why not get in touch with Associated Cleaning Contractors to find out more about our commercial cleaning services?

Most businesses consider commercial cleaning as routine expenses that are only necessary for running the enterprise. However, they never think about how much keeping the offices clean contributes to the business’s success.

Here are how commercial cleaning helps improve your business bottom line in 2022:

Improves productivity

The employees’ immediate surroundings determine their state of mind, attitude, and emotional well-being. The same happens with the employees and the state of the office.

A clean office helps improve the staff concentration levels as it reduces the risk of distractions. A cleaner office also means easier maintenance of working tools, reduces search time, and inspires motivation. All these combine to ensure top-level productivity, resulting to better returns.

Increased customer satisfaction

Your office is where you get to make the first impression on your clients. A clean office shows the client that they are dealing with an organised and professional outfit. This means they can easily trust you with their money and other resources.

Once the clients are impressed, the staff has an easier time dealing with them; they can also bring referrals, increasing the customer base. However, by having a dirty office, you portray lack of seriousness which losses you business.

Saves money

If there were a choice, most companies would opt to skip the budget of commercial cleaning services. However, hiring a commercial cleaner tends to save the company money.

Specialist cleaners have the expertise to notice issues like pest control, HVAC needs, leaks, and other problems that arise from lack of maintenance. Therefore, the commercial cleaning services are preventative maintenance options to avoid spending too much on emergency repairs or replacements.

Free up time for main office tasks

It takes a lot of time for staff to work when they have to look for tools through clutters and do most organisations by themselves. With a professional cleaning service, the team has all the time for work hence more output and returns for the company.

Are you looking for a professional cleaning Manchester to improve your baseline? Reach out to Associated Cleaning Contractors for your free quote and a cleaner and safer office.

While many UK businesses are managing to stay resilient with staff working remotely under government restrictions, there are still steps they can take now to prepare for the inevitable return to the office.

Lockdowns might be disruptive to business processes, but they can create a convenient window of opportunity for cleaning offices. With employees safely working from home and not underfoot, a team of professional cleaners can arrive at your premises and help you make a safe and sanitary environment for your staff’s impending arrival.

Ensuring staff feel secure and happy

While you may be reducing the number of staff you have on-site to allow for social distancing, when your personnel come back to the office, you’ll want them to feel safe. A professional cleaning service can assist with this by creating an environment that adheres to government recommended health and safety protocols. When they sit back at a polished desk or visit your onsite facilities to find them gleaming it may help put their minds at ease and allow them to focus on work.

A cleaner work environment will help staff feel more positive and motivated, with sparkling windows, well-hoovered carpets and tidy kitchens supplying a much needed “feel good” factor in these trying times.

Keeping compliant with Health and Safety

To conform with UK health and safety legislation, it is essential that all enterprises conduct a comprehensive risk assessment at their offices. Ensuring your offices are comprehensively cleaned from top to bottom is an integral part of businesses remaining compliant.

With the latest technology, techniques and access to specialist equipment, professional cleaners can deliver the highest hygiene standards required.

Expert professional cleaners on-site

Providing peace of mind and allowing our clients to feel secure, all our employees undergo enhanced DBS checks, and are fully trained professionals with GNVQ certification to their credit. Additionally, all our uniformed operators always display ID badges while working.

To make sure your offices are clean and ready to return to business, contact our dedicated team at ACC for health and safety advice and to arrange a visit from a professional cleaning service you can count on.

Building sites are intrinsically dangerous places. Piles of materials, equipment, machinery, cables, trenches… just about every hazard imaginable.

So it’s crucial that the construction site is kept clean and neat, here’s why.

Culture change

Most construction workers these days are well-trained and equipped. Health and Safety awareness has developed rapidly and it’s fair to say that there’s been a real culture change, especially on major construction sites. There’s more than one good reason for that; injury causes great distress, delays and economic damage. In 2018 alone, despite all the good work in H&S awareness, well over half a million construction workers suffered injuries that were serious enough to be reportable. Tragically, 144 workers lost their lives.

The full human and financial cost of injury and illness in the workplace is immeasurable, but with almost 500 cases ending in court in 2018 resulting in fines of over £70 million, there’s no question that main contractors must and do take Health and Safety very seriously.

Post-build, pre-clean

When a major building project is nearing completion, the site enters a new phase that is potentially dangerous in different ways. All the major subcontractors have gone, not all of them leaving a clean site behind. Debris and rubbish pile up with leftover building materials, broken tools, all manner of stuff waiting to snag an unwary leg.

Every site goes through this phase – the building work is 90% done, but the place is far from ready to receive visits from inspectors and potential buyers. As a Health and Safety risk, it’s still very much a live case – and the main contractor is still very much liable for any injuries.

After build clean up

A professional after build clean up by ACC isn’t just about sprucing the site up to boost selling – although we do a pretty good job on that front, too. ACC teams are fully trained in H&S awareness and we’ll look at the whole site with safety fully in focus. We know the regulations and we also know common sense. Together, those could end up saving someone a twisted ankle, a sprained back, or even, in the worst-case scenario, a fortune.

When you’re managing a busy factory, a regular cleaning schedule may be the last thing on your mind. However, for factories potential hazards, neglecting cleaning can lead to severe health and safety violations. Let’s take a look at some ways in which commercial cleaning services can help improve your factory’s health and safety.

Meet regulation standards

According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), even slips and trips cost industries over £500 million per year. So why take the risk? In complying to industry regulations, you can ensure that you minimise expenditure and keep your employees safe. According to the UK Government’s ‘The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992’ legislation, your floors must be suitable for the type of work undertaken and kept in good condition. Equally, all employers are responsible for their employee’s health and safety in the workplace. You can attain both of these regulations with routine cleaning and maintenance to your factory.

Plan ahead

Routine cleaning schedules are essential in improving the long-term health and safety of your factory. In planning, you need to distinguish between a regular cleaning routine and the occasional deep clean your facilities require:

• Regular cleaning

  In between your scheduled deep cleans, you need to keep on top of things. The schedule will include removing debris, clearing mess or dust, and clearing up spills immediately.

• Deep cleaning

  As dirt and grime buildup over time, you need deep industrial cleans to help maintain your machinery’s productivity. This type of maintenance will take several hours or even days, depending on the scale of your operation, and will clean everything intensely.

Find a company that works for you

Cleaning your factory to the required industry standard is a big ask. So make sure you find a commercial cleaning company who can help meet all your needs. Before hiring them, ask:

• Can they help with deep and regular cleaning?
• Can they clean all our surfaces, including racking, cladding and doors?
• Do they specialise in our industry?

At ACC, we offer specialist services, including factory and kitchen cleaning, providing contracts that work for you throughout the North West, including Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Wigan and Manchester. For more information or to receive your free estimate, call us today on 01204 495 222 or send a message on our contact form.

Cleanliness standards in the workplace have never come under so much scrutiny

The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic led to restrictions being put in place that have changed everyday life as we know it. Many people are now working from home and the onus is on them to keep their work station clean. Those who have returned to their company’s offices have done so with the utmost caution.
Now, more than ever before, the importance of workplaces being clean at all times is unquantifiable. Offices are consistently undergoing deep cleans and employees have been encouraged to follow hand-washing and other such protocols to maintain hygiene standards.

But not all business premises are as easy to keep clean:

Some office environments are easier to keep clean than others; one such workplace where it is more challenging to maintain cleanliness standards is on a construction site. The very nature of the work means that messiness and dust is a guarantee.

However, even a building site contains areas where high standards of hygiene can and should be maintained. These include meeting points, rest areas and toilets.

Employees who have recently returned to work in the construction industry following lockdown could be forgiven for feeling anxious. Health and safety on building sites has always been associated with the wearing of hard hats and protective boots. However, the maintenance of hygiene standards is now equally important.

How to help ease employees’ concerns:

From the perspective of a construction worker, the sight of their workplace being consistently cleaned and tidied by a professional cleaning company would be enough to lift the spirits.

It would not only mean building site employees are working in a safer environment, it would ease their fears of contracting the virus, decrease their anxiety levels and help them to focus on their work.

As is the case in all workplaces, personal hygiene is the responsibility of each individual and once they are keeping up their end of the bargain, plus they see that their employer is pulling out all the stops to provide a clean and safe work environment, staff morale will remain in a good place.

If you would like a free quote for cleaning a site or an after-build clean, get in touch with ACC. We cover the North West including Manchester City Centre and further afield areas like Wigan and Bolton.

Apart from obvious health & safety reasons for keeping office spaces and windows clean and clear, it also makes sense logically, because when things are clean and clear, they look and feel better, which frees-up our energy to see things more clearly.

First Impressions Count

When we think about it, no matter how much we try to deny this, first impressions always count. So, when dust, dirt or lack of general cleanliness is left to accumulate over time in a building, not only does it have a negative impact on the people working there, it can create a lasting impression on new visitors, clients and customers who arrive for the very first time.

Whilst those working in the environment may have gotten used to a dusty carpet, smeary windows or ‘that strange odour’ in the Reception Area, those arriving for the first time are highly likely to notice it – thus, blinding them to the positives of your business; or at the very least, clouding their view.

Direct Their Focus

What would you like visitors, clients and employees to focus on? Tired and murky environments can create tired and murky views!

On the flipside, everyone notices (or sub-consciously feels) a bright, clean space because it looks inviting. Even if spaces are not ultra-modern but are clean, welcome visitors and employees, alike, unconsciously allowing them to see the good in your organisation.

Healthy businesses

Cleaning away dust and dirt after builds may be obvious to project management within construction, yet perhaps there’s also a good reason why we say that any ongoing cleaning adds sparkle! We are all made of energy, so when that same energy becomes stuck or stagnant in our environment – with the ongoing accumulation of dirt – it can become difficult to see past that.

Lack of cleanliness is a distraction for any organisation. It can leave everyone feeling sluggish – whether they notice it immediately or not – and just as it’s unhealthy for people to turn up to work unclean, unkempt and dishevelled – not to mention unhealthy for business – it’s exactly the same for the environment and space those employees work in.