THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CLEANING SHOPS & RETAIL UNITS

We have talked about the visual impression that your shop needs to present in order to survive in a cut throat environment, but having a clean and presentable shop at all times is about far more than that. The way your shop is designed and laid out needs to show that you have some individual character, and cleanliness is all part of your shop standing out from the crowd. You may also be opening your shop with a launch event, so standards are particularly important in promoting the right image.

But from a legal point of view, a retail business owner also has health and safety responsibilities, to themselves, their employees and members of the public. A shop is open to the public and therefore you have public liability responsibilities, so cleanliness and orderliness is important to prevent injury and illness to the public whilst people are in your shop. If you are serving food then the legal restrictions are of course much tighter, and also if you have public welfare facilities as part of your shop.

Employees also expect these same standards in their place of work, so cleanliness and presenting them with a suitable workplace and workstation is a fundamental element of your duties as an employer. A clean and orderly retail space can also influence how an employee works, and not just in terms of morale. Having robust systems in place for tidying and organising the shop can help productivity and how employees operate on a daily basis. Retail is all about selling and shifting units, many shops work at a fast pace, so having systems that tidy, replace and organise help to fulfil this and ensure an employee has everything they need to hand and can make sales rather than wasting time searching for, or cleaning things.

• High level cleaning – in a retail space this can involve high shelving, signage and storage, but also the top of air conditioning units, so anything out of sight and not necessarily touched day-to-day also needs to be cleaned periodically.
• Entrance matting – not only is this a major part of the first impression a customer will get, but often entrance matting will include branding or the company name, so you need this to be pristine at all times.
• Polish surfaces and racking – these are not just used for storage they are also for presentation and making sure your products or services are seen in their best possible light. If these are used for food storage or for any kind of perishable item then quite clearly there will be much stricter controls on cleanliness. 
• Sanitising – you should already be aware of your responsibilities for handling and storing food, but all areas that come into contact with food will need regular sterilising.
• External frontage – in addition to windows you need to clean doorways and signage so that approaching shoppers are attracted to enter rather than walk past. Another element of this is the pavement outside and adjacent walls, so you may need to monitor discarded rubbish, chewing gum and graffiti, but make sure you also agree with your cleaning company what the physical boundaries of their responsibilities are.
• Under counters – another area in a retail space that is out of sight and often gets forgotten is under counter areas. Items can accumulate there, you may store waste items there and employees will generally spend a lot of time in close contact with these areas. So, they need to be thoroughly cleaned on a regular basis. This is also a factor in the importance of everyday organisation, as we talked about above. 
• Air ducts – air conditioning systems often have air ducts built into ceiling tiles. Dust and dirt can accumulate in these and should be cleaned regularly. This will be part of the system’s routine maintenance, but a cleaning company should also monitor and react to this.
• Flooring – you hope to attract a lot of traffic into your shop and depending on its location and the type of flooring used, this can soon show. Flooring is one element of a shop that you should pay the highest attention to, as it covers the largest visible area of your retail space and can accumulate dirt very quickly.

• Behind the scenes – stockrooms and warehousing will require cleaning according to individual standards, but this is a big factor in general organisation and of course backroom kitchens need very strict attention. But here we are also talking about communal areas, so these could be staff rooms and canteens where food is stored and consumed and welfare facilities such as sinks and toilets. In some smaller retail stores, welfare facilities could also be open to the public, which presents a whole new level of cleanliness responsibility.
• Waste – waste practices in retail stores are often under scrutiny and can soon get out of hand. You need to have robust policies in place, including for the recycling of packaging. 

Your new retail business is very important to you and the cleanliness standards you expect need to be reflected in the company you choose to partner with. However big or small your retail empire is, there are common expectations when approaching and discussing a cleaning contract with a professional cleaning company.

First of all you should expect the company to carry out a comprehensive risk assessment of your retail space to identify the standards required, the individual or specialist cleaning tasks required, and to establish the frequency of cleaning in certain areas. This will form the basis of a cleaning schedule which will be divided up into daily, or more frequently than that, weekly, and more periodical cleaning tasks. This will be agreed with you and the contract will also include the provision and storage of cleaning products and equipment, and who has responsibility for what.

As the employer, you should also expect the following:

• Training and qualifications – the cleaning company should have proper NVQ or City & Guilds qualified staff.
• Accreditations – a professional cleaning company should be recognised within its own industry, and so should have accreditations such as BICSc (British Institute of Cleaning Science), SafeContractor (maintaining health and safety standards at all times), SafePQQ and CIMS (cleaning industry management standard). You may also expect specific accreditations relating to your industry, such as Food Standards, for example.
• Health & Safety awareness – the company should be able to present safe systems of work and demonstrate their standards of health & safety training, and how these disciplines can be applied to the individual circumstances presented by your particular retail space.
• Meeting deadlines – inevitably you will need your cleaning company to be able to react to meet deadlines for shop openings, and this may involve the ability to throw extra staff and other resources at a problem at short notice.   
• Multi-skilled – you need to know that the cleaning company have staff who can carry out many different cleaning disciplines over the course of a day.
• Professional staff – even though they don’t work for you, cleaning staff are representing your shop and can sometimes be visible to customers, so you need cleaning staff to be well-dressed, polite and professional, and also to be discrete where required in how they carry out their tasks during opening hours.
• UK coverage – if you have a chain of retail stores you may need your cleaning company to have the resources to provide staff, and the same high standards, at several sites around the country, sometimes at short notice.
• Professionally managed – the owner and employer of the shop is ultimately responsible for how it is presented, but you don’t want to have an active day-to-day role in this. You want the cleaning process to take care of itself so that you can concentrate on your own staff, stocks, sales etc., so you need the cleaning company to be well managed so that you only need to get involved when absolutely necessary.