How to Determine Staffing Levels in a Commercial Cleaning Account

If you've been in the cleaning industry for a while, you probably have a pretty good idea how many employees it will take to clean a particular building. But using an educated guess is not always accurate, especially in recent years where cleaning specifications are more customized to each building.

So how do you go about determining the staffing levels needed in a commercial cleaning account?

First, start by measuring the cleanable square footage of the building. Be sure to break the building down into areas such as offices, break rooms, restrooms, etc. And measure the different floor surfaces within each area.

Next, create your list of specifications. This is your task list of services to be performed. Once you have the specifications list, assign frequencies to each task. The easiest way to do this is to assign specific tasks to each area you measured in the first step.

Once you have your specifications list and frequencies, apply production rates to each task. For example, if it takes 3 minutes to clean a restroom fixture, add up all the fixtures and multiply by 3. If you have 6 fixtures (3 sinks, 3 toilets), then multiply 6 x 3 for a total of 18 minutes.

After applying production rates and then adding up the total labor hours, you'll need to determine your labor cost. To do this, multiply the hours by wage rates in your company. Next, you'll need to add your labor burden (employment taxes, worker's compensation, and other labor costs). This will give you the true cost of labor for this building. So if your labor cost is $1200 for the building and your labor burden percentage is 21%, your total labor cost for the building is $1452.00 per month. Once you know your total labor cost for the building, you can determine the staffing level needed.

All this number crunching may sound a bit overwhelming if you're doing it all by hand, but it's important to know how to arrive at these numbers so your price estimate is not way off track. Once you understand the basics of how to come up with your price, you can start using online tools or software that will help you determine your price in a more automated way.

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Jean Hanson helps owners of commercial cleaning companies build a more profitable and successful cleaning business through her online community at TheJanitorialStore.com. Jean is also the host of the popular Web TV show CleaningBiz.tv and author of the newsletter Trash Talk - sign up today!