How much do you pay your commercial cleaners?

[TheOtherHotstepper]

Just that really.

If you have business premises and you employ cleaners, how much do you pay them and what area of the country are you in?

Particularly interested if you have licensed premises.

I'm due to meet with our cleaners on Tuesday and I am rather afraid that they have been taking previous management for a ride.

Thanks in advance.

At our work we were paying £23 an hour for cleaning staff to an agency. They weren’t even reliable! Two cleaners 1.5 hours a day. Decision was made to bring it in house. Now employ a cleaner directly at £11 an hour. They work a five hour shift so costs about the same/ a little more by the time you add on employment costs. Generally much cleaner. They work during the day so there is a bit of juggling. No one was interested in a two-three hours a day job so other things were added in to bulk up the time.

With independent cleaners, locally the market is quite challenging. You can’t hire an independent cleaner to do a 2-3 hour job for much less than £20 an hour and often they will want paid travel time on top.

Market town/ ruralish Scotland.

Sussex we pay £25 an hour but they only do toilets the staff do vacuuming, kitchen and clean their own workspace.

Thanks all. That's really helpful.

Wow! We pay living wage. At my previous company we also paid living wage. The agent gets a 5% mark up on top.

Then it’s likely they are an employee. People often forget the additional costs of having an employee. Holiday pay, NI, pension etc. A good rule of thumb is 1.4 times the hourly rate paid. Even at living wage (10.90?) that works out to 15.26 an hour, a bit of profit, plus paying the cleaners to move between jobs and you can see how easily it gets to £20-25ph.

Yes they are permanent employees, work full time, have pension, sick leave etc. I assumed that's what the OP meant as they asked about business premises.

I can see why a once per week cleaner might get £25/hour.

Ours are self employed, there's two of them working 14 hours a week and their hourly rate comes out at about £23 gross.

I initially thought that was a bit steep, but it looks as if it might be about right. I am however not minded to agree an increase until they actually start cleaning properly!

It's not quite the same but I used to manage holiday cottages and often clients would balk at the price of professional cleaning in between guests. I would suggest (nicely) that they cleaned it themselves a couple of times and timed how long it takes to get it to an acceptable standard and what the priorities are. Break it down and write a checklist of what needs done daily , weekly, monthly.

I think with cleaners I like to know that they have sufficient time to do the job if managing time effectively and that they have had clear instruction. You'd be amazed how many people just vaguely ask them to clean and point them in direction of cleaning cupboard.