Want to guess what it is?
I’ll give you a hint: it’s on every single floor and in every single room in the building.
It’s not the floors, the windows, or the doorknobs.
Give up?
The air vents.
Walk into a building that isn’t being cleaned well, and I can almost guarantee the air vents are filthy.
Air vents are one of the most ignored surfaces in any building. It’s not a mystery why: they’re up high or (occasionally) down low. Most people never look those directions, even cleaners who are supposed to. And getting vents clean takes extra work and extra effort, a ladder and a plan, not just a quick pass on the way through.
Plus, air vents are ripe for the biggest excuse in any industry: “that’s not my job.” Cleaners think they’re HVAC’s problem. HVAC only handles changing the filters, not cleaning the vents themselves. If you’re not careful, you can end up with both thinking the other one will take care of the vents but no one actually doing it.
And that’s a big problem. A dirty vent doesn’t stay a cosmetic issue. In the summer and the winter, when your system is running hard and the building is sealed up, all of your fresh air is coming through those vents. If the vent is caked in dust and grime, everyone’s breathing dirty air. Leave that vent alone long enough, mold starts growing. Now you’ve got an employee health issue, not a housekeeping one.
This is the kind of thing I almost always flag on a monthly walkthrough. It’s never the problem anyone called about or the one a facility manager wants fixed, but it’s almost always there.
So if you can’t remember the last time your vents were actually cleaned or who did the cleaning, let’s talk.