So what’s the difference with hiring a cleaning company or an individual “cleaner” to clean your home? Well there’s a lot of differences with these two types of service so I thought this would be a good place to lay out the pros and cons of both. Let’s look at hiring an individual who comes to your house to clean.
Hiring an individual to come clean your home has its advantages. First, they are there for you. They aren’t bound by any company guidelines, they often don’t have a consistent cleaning checklist, and they have the freedom to customize every cleaning to the client. Another advantage of an individual cleaner is the trust level with the client. A level of trust is built pretty fast as the same person comes each week to clean and therefore keeps the homeowner at ease with their level of trust and consistency. And probably the most advantageous aspect of hiring an individual for home cleaning is cost. Generally individuals can charge less for cleanings as their costs with cleaning is relatively low. They are able to charge a lower rate than most cleaning business.
Hiring a cleaning company for cleaning services has many advantages for home cleaning. Let’s look at the cleaners. First and foremost, who is this person? Not asking what their name is or where they are from, I mean WHO IS THIS? Most of the time a client hires an individual without running or seeing any type of background check. This can be a very important step in hiring someone to consistently perform work in your home. With Natural Shine Cleaning, all employees undergo a full background check down to County searches. When hiring cleaners for my business, I do want to know WHO THIS IS. Another advantage of hiring a cleaning company is consistency. With our cleanings, not only do we send the same person or people for each house, we also have a company Cleaning Checklist. This ensures a consistent cleaning each time along with a consistent price per cleaning. We perform our full cleaning checklist each visit. And with a company, we are more than an individual. If a hired individual cleaner is sick, goes on vacation, or busy with other cleanings, their schedule can go dark and you are left without a cleaner. With a company, there is always a backup cleaner who can work if cleaners are sick or can’t make it to work. This again ensures a consistent cleaning schedule.
And then there is the cleaning cost. Cost is a very important factor with any service you are hiring out. Generally a cleaning company will have a higher cost than an individual cleaner. And why? Is it so the business owner can make a lot of money? Well maybe for some but with any legit and professional business, there are costs. And costs. And costs. With a cleaning business there are costs for the website, scheduling app, employee background checks, work uniforms, cleaning supplies/products, workers comp. insurance, liability insurance, auto insurance, office space, and advertising costs to name SOME of them. Generally individual cleaners don’t carry a lot of these elements in their business as they think they don’t need to therefore their costs with charging clients is usually much lower than a company. But out of all these costs, INSURANCE is the most important. Inviting someone into your home without the proper insurance carried by that individual could be devastating if the cleaner damaged something significant or injured themselves in the home or even in the driveway. All of those costs could easily fall on the owner of the property and not on the cleaner.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of owning and operating small business so I will always give props to an individual who has a talent, monetizes that talent, and can find a way to make a living performing that talent. But there are more aspects than cost to a client that should be looked at and researched before anyone should be hired to perform work in your home.