The value of a specialist cleaning team: A quick guide for Financial Directors
01 July 2023 Category: Nviro News Schools, Academies and Trusts
We’ll cut to the chase: running a school is becoming more expensive. The world is changing. And in today’s climate, somehow, Finance Directors still have to balance the books. That means nobody can afford to be spending money when they don’t need to.
It’s also why we’re also here to tell you that when it comes to cleaning, the cheapest option isn’t always a saving. A bigger cleaning budget makes your school nicer, yes. It means your school stays clean, safe, and hygienic. But cleaning isn’t just mopping the floors and making sure the window ledges are dust free. An adequately equipped cleaning team adds value in many other ways, too.
Here’s just a few examples: the better equipped your school is to deal with preventing the spread of germs and diseases, the fewer absences there are. That means less money gets spent on supply teachers, and students spend more days in school. Likewise, an environment that is pleasant to work in nurtures academic performance. All of this affects the OFSTED assessment report and the desirability of the school, which can subsequently improve a school’s finances.
These are far from the only examples of how an adequate cleaning budget is important for your school, but they are emblematic of the topic at hand: good cleaning provides both direct and indirect financial value. When it comes to making decisions on the budget, it’s important to consider those aspects as well.
Here are some of the other ways specialist cleaning teams can provide value:
1 – Preventative maintenance
Prevention is often better than a cure. True for medicine, and definitely true when it comes to maintaining high standards of cleanliness in your schools. If a building is clean, hygienic and safe, maintained to a high standard, it’s easy to keep to those standards and it’s a lower cost overall.
If you let standards slip by a single degree, your site team can spend all their time firefighting and playing catch up. You also might later face unplanned costs during closures like the summer when you pay out for a deep clean.
Mess engenders more mess. When students see the fabric of their school as unkempt, they start to care less. If there’s one tin can on the ground, they unconsciously think, why not throw another beside it – and this makes your school’s job harder.
If the bare minimum is done during term, one stain will attract another. And if the damage is left until the summer, you’ll inevitably be looking at spending more on deep cleaning, replacing carpets, painting and so on.
2 – Re-allocating budgets
For a recent contract we won in the Isle of Wight, the question wasn’t to assess whether a school wanted to stretch their funds on the cleaning budget. They did – they were just not sure how to do it.
When we looked at their finances, we identified how our cleaning teams could fulfil needs they had allocated to different budgets. For instance, they were paying a second company to complete H&S tasks – such as risk assessments and COSH management – when they didn’t need to. It was part of what Nviro could already provide, and by merging their budgets a little, they could get more for their money.
3 – Consumables
In another instance, we found a consumables range that worked broad-scope across an entire school. And, broadly, this made complete sense. We wouldn’t advocate for us to start scanning for deals on paperclips, or glue and textiles. We don’t know the area. But we do know cleaning and hygiene – we know toilet rolls, hand towels, and soaps because we work in bathrooms every day.
We know that cheaper here won’t always save money. For instance, with the right dispensing systems and better suited products, you can reduce the waste of those products.
By handling restocking for you, we can find value that can’t always be found by those used to placing orders for new books and stationery. For instance, by sourcing and using specialist protective coatings, we’ve been able to keep surfaces cleaner for longer and help reduce pupil and staff absences.
4 – Events
Events are a further example of the importance of an adequate cleaning team. Making sure a school prepares for events is important. If a school looks sub par, parents are more likely to quibble over fees. If external donors visit and notice the new arts wing they helped fund looks run down, they may not wish to donate next time they’re asked.
It’s also another area where budgets can be merged. If you have an event coming up, Nviro will have it on our radar so our cleaning teams can prepare the relevant spaces for visitors. There’s certainly no need to double-dip on sourcing extra cleaning.
5 – Department resources
The final, and arguably the most significant factor in weighing up the cleaning budget is the time saving that you can bring to other school departments – particularly from an HR and business management standpoint.
Finance Directors or Business Managers are often responsible for all the elements in a school that aren’t strictly academic, including HR. Your resources are limited, but somehow you need to manage it all.
While you’re geared up to look after teaching and support staff, everything that falls in the remit of cleaning and hygiene is unlikely to be your area of expertise. You also know how to recruit great teachers, and yet you might not know where to start with cleaners.
The good news is if you let a specialist cleaning provider like Nviro take charge of those issues, you’ll be able to focus your limited resources on the areas where you’ll have the most impact.
So when it comes to HR, consumables, or risk assessments, or just the fabric of your school in general, it’s worth stepping back to look at the bigger picture of what a specialist cleaning company can deliver for you.
At Nviro we’re always looking at how we can work with schools to meet their needs in an intelligent and savvy way – so start a conversation with us to see how we can optimise your budget. By investing in cleaning, you’ll be maintaining an environment that lends itself to learning, so you can focus on the teaching, the students and delivering strategic outcomes for the school.
As a specialist cleaning provider in educational settings, Nviro provides clean, hygienic and safe environments in universities, colleges and schools. Read our blog ‘New cleaning contractor? No problem. Nviro and the mobilisation process’.
