Contract Janitorial Services
Contract Janitorial Services as Liability Protection
When you consider the myriad ways contract janitorial services can save your company money, risk management may not be one of the benefits that come immediately to mind. It may be one of the most important, though. When you take on employees, you take on liability risks with them. And janitorial services, for several reasons, present many of these risks beyond what your other employees do. Bringing in contract janitorial services can thus remove the potential for enormous headaches and costs to you and your business.
Wet Surfaces and Chemicals
Workplace accidents can create problems for you when injuries create costs or lost productivity. Wet floors and surfaces can make your employees slip, and supplies left out can cause trips or other accidents. When you have an in-house janitorial team, rather than a contract provider that carries its own insurance and bond, you bear the risk for all of this, and the increased insurance premiums that take the risk into account.
Further, the products that janitors use often contain chemicals to disinfect surfaces. If these make someone ill, or if they prove ineffective in eliminating bacteria, using an in-house team makes you liable for the illnesses. A contract team, by contrast, will both select the products that work best and be responsible if something does go wrong.
After-Hours Work
Your in-house janitorial staff members carry keys to the offices and rooms in your building, and often have access to these rooms when no one else is there. If an item goes missing, whether because it was misplaced, moved and forgotten, or actually taken, you bear liability for the loss of property. Making this even more insidious, many insurance policies exclude intentional acts from coverage, so you may be on the hook for replacement costs without the benefit of coverage. Importantly, this can create problems and costs to you even if no one did anything wrong; the opportunity and suspicion can lead to assumptions that cost you money. When you use contract janitorial services, though, you shift the risk to the provider, along with the headaches that inevitably come with it.
Property Damage
Finally, accidents happen every day. When a janitor cleans around expensive or delicate items, the risk of damage to the property is always there. Sometimes the item is where it should not be, and sometimes a cleaning technique is less careful than it should be. In either event, an in-house staff leaves you potentially liable for anything that happens to an employee’s personal property—or to your company’s property if the damage is to something that is yours.
The Benefits of Liability-Shifting
Most of the time, these problems do not arise. People are careful and generally act as they are supposed to do. Still, hiring contract janitorial service professionals means you work with people whose sole focus is on your janitorial needs, so the work tends to be more careful and professional. Further, if something does happen, you shift the liability and the cost burden to the provider. The Service Fort is licensed, bonded, and insured, and thus protects you from the hidden costs of an in-house janitorial team.