Ranking Every Cleaning Validation Method: A Tier List for Commercial Cleaning

Takeaway: The ideal solution is one that requires zero to minimal extra work for cleaners.Questions to ask:

Takeaway: The best solution for fast rollouts is one that requires little to no training:

It was designed to add zero extra work for your cleaners while providing reliable and actionable data.

• Zero extra work or device required for your cleaners

  No manual inputs, login, training, or mobile devices are required for your cleaners. They can complete their tasks normally without distraction.

• Provides impartial data that stakeholders can trust

  Because it requires no intervention from your cleaners, your audit logs are impartial and free of human error.

• Can be set up in 1 hour

  It can be self-installed in a building within one hour.

• Works without WiFi

  Bluetooth beacons work independently of WiFi networks.This ensures that cleaner activities are tracked regardless of the presence or strength of WiFi signals.
  
  This is especially crucial when cleaners are working in spaces with limited or no WiFi coverage, when they need to move across multiple buildings, or where WiFi might be intentionally restricted or inaccessible due to security protocols.

• It’s completely private

  A key advantage over GPS tracking is that privacy is guaranteed for your cleaning staff. Mero’s hardware collects no personal information from building visitors and cleaner identities stay private.
  
  Once the beacons are off and cleaners leave the area, their location is no longer monitored.

• Highly accurate for spaces from 3x3 to 100x100 feet (30x30 meters)

  You can monitor areas down to a single washroom or meeting room.

• Superior latitude tracking lets you track across multiple floors

  This is a significant advantage over solutions that use GPS because cleaning commercial buildings often involves multiple floors.
  
  This advantage is particularly crucial for cleaning multi-floor commercial buildings including warehouses, offices, and airports.

• Beacons require a change of battery every 2-4 years

• Requires the installation of base stations in key locations

• High precision

  Geofencing is one of the more accurate technologies on the market for defining areas. The level of precision provided allows you to set up a geofence that matches the contours of your building and understand when people are entering and exiting specified areas.

• Wider range than Bluetooth

  Geofencing works well for wide-open indoor & outdoor spaces.

• Expensive

  Wi-Fi devices can cost up to 20x more than Bluetooth devices, making them cost-prohibitive for most companies when it comes to covering indoor spaces like office buildings or retail stores.

• Depends on WiFi

  Areas with poor or no WiFi coverage can lead to gaps in tracking data, potentially impacting accuracy. If the building goes offline, all tracking goes out with it, leaving you in the dark.

• Heavy maintenance and implementation requirements

  Wi-Fi geofences require a lot of time and setup to work properly. They need power and data connections to function, as well as backend infrastructure to administer user access and permissions.
  
  While some solutions use existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, companies have to wrestle with the building owners and their IT departments to install the technology.
  
  Plus, an extensive calibration process is required to ensure that Wi-Fi signals have strong accuracy across your building. This process needs to be repeated after any significant movement of equipment in the building. It’s also necessary to perform routine checkups to ensure that the routers being used are working properly.
  
  These complexities might deter building owners from adopting Wi-Fi geofencing due to potential implementation failures and cyber security risks.

• Can be overloaded during busy periods

  If there are a lot of users connected to the network, Wi-Fi can quickly become overloaded.

• Struggles to track people across floors

  While WiFi geofencing can be reasonably accurate for determining a device's location within a single floor or a specific area covered by the same set of access points, it generally struggles to accurately determine vertical location (i.e., which floor of a building a cleaner is on) without additional information or infrastructure.

• Features designed for cleaning

  These solutions are built for smaller to midsize cleaning companies and meet the specific needs of the commercial cleaning industry.
  
  You can use them to manage work orders, plan shifts, message cleaners, run inspections, and track time and payroll.

• Wastes up to 1 hour of work per cleaner each shift

  Manually checking in, going into an app, checking boxes, taking pictures, and uploading files can add up to an hour of extra work for every cleaner, on every shift.

• Cleaners won’t comply 100%

  It’s virtually guaranteed that your cleaners will forget to check in, input tasks, or scan QR codes. This makes your data less reliable.

• They require cleaners to carry a mobile phone

  Clients might also not understand the reasons why cleaners are on their phones during their shifts and think cleaners are wasting time.   

• Not reliable for tracking in multi-story commercial buildings

  GPS tracking struggles with vertical accuracy, making it unsuitable for distinguishing between different floors.
  
  Its primary design is for horizontal positioning, and the signal attenuation from building materials further hampers its ability to provide precise indoor vertical location.

• Cost-effective for small teams

  If you’re managing a team of 10-20 cleaners and don’t need to proactively show clients which sites are cleaned, employee tracking software can be a cost-effective solution.

• You can use it for work order management

  If you have the patience and time to make it work, you can use its features to schedule, manage, and track work orders for your cleaning staff.

• Time-consuming to adjust workflows

  Working with generic software that wasn’t built from the ground up for cleaning is like fitting a square peg in a round hole. Here’s what the owner of a cleaning company told us:

  

• Adds more administrative work for your supervisors

  

• It’s as falsifiable as pen and paper

  We can't tell you the number of times people have told us that their records don't correspond to their work logs. Often, the logs don't even get done.

• It adds extra work for cleaners

  Every time they check in for a shift, they have to log into their application. Every time they finish a task, they have to stop what they were doing and register it with a new tap.
  
  The constant switch between work and record keeping can waste cleaner time for up to an hour per shift.

• Cleaners need a mobile phone

  To use the application your cleaners must have a mobile device. That’s just another thing for them to remember to bring, not lose, or be distracted by.

• Clients might not like it

  Your clients might see a mobile phone in your cleaners’ hands while entering information.
  
  We’ve found that some building owners complain about this, thinking cleaners are not completing their tasks.

• You can get picture confirmations

  You can see before and after pictures attached to each task to confirm tasks have been completed.

• It’s time-consuming for cleaners

  Cleaners have to constantly switch from cleaning to scanning and inputting info into their phones.

• Requires a mobile phone for every cleaner.

  Companies have to provide a phone for every cleaner. Cleaners have to remember to bring it, use it, & keep it charged.

• Intrusive for tenants

  Having QR codes plastered all over the building can look messy. Tenants will stumble on them and wonder what they're for.

• Not reliable

  If tenants move out or your building changes, the QR codes you’ve installed become useless.

• They’re easily gameable

  We’ve heard of cases where cleaners will just take a picture of the QR code without ever completing assigned tasks.

• Can’t reliably keep employees accountable

  If a supervisor follows up with a cleaner about an incomplete task, they can simply say that they forgot to scan the code but they’ve completed it.
  
  There is no real evidence that they did or didn’t do it. 

• It’s online

• Unsanitary

  Cleaners have to physically press something, imagine what that looks like day in and day out.

• Low compliance

  It relies on cleaners to remember to press a button.

• Very low-quality data

  All you get is confirmation that someone was present in a space and pressed a button.
  
  It’s not real proof of work. You won’t be able to see how long they’ve spent there, what happened in between, and if the task was actually completed on time.

• It’s virtually free if you’re already using it.

• Falsifiable and unreliable

  You’re acting in good faith that people are writing down exactly what’s happening and being compliant with your cleaning policies. 

• It provides zero actionability

  Paper logs don't give you a clear picture of what’s happening.
  
  The data can’t be easily saved and analyzed to optimize cleaning schedules and staff allocation.

• It provides zero trust to clients

  Because of their unreliability, you can’t share paper logs with your clients to inspire confidence that your cleaners are doing what they say they’re doing.