For many of the organisations we speak with, commercial cleaning just gets lumped into the “necessary expense” column. It’s something you have to pay for, sure. But it’s not something you expect a return from on your investment. It’s overhead. It's the cost of doing business. It's a number on a spreadsheet. Am I the owner of a commercial cleaning company? Yes. But I don’t blame you for thinking that way. For many of you, that’s exactly what commercial cleaning has been for your company. An inconsistent service, delivered by providers who cut corners, don’t train their staff, and offer nothing beyond the basics. In that case? To be honest, in those cases, your commercial cleaning is just a cost. But it doesn’t have to be. A good cleaning company—one that knows how to clean, trains their people properly, and is structured to deliver outcomes—can absolutely generate a return for your business. Real-world, measurable ROI. And not just through cleaner toilets or shinier floors. I’m talking about fewer staff complaints. Lower turnover. Less downtime. Happier teams. Fewer maintenance issues. Higher productivity. Actual impact on your bottom line. 📊 Case Study: Car Dealership Achieves $480,000 ROI, 11% Productivity Gain with In-Tec In this article, I’m going to walk you through a series of real examples where cleaning wasn’t just a cost; it was a lever for growth, performance, and profitability. These are the kinds of results any business can see when they treat cleaning as a strategic investment, and partner with the right provider to make it happen. Yes, Your Commercial Cleaner Can Be a Profit Centre “How can cleaning actually deliver ROI?” It’s a fair question. Most people don’t expect a return from their cleaner. But again, most of the time, you've never had a commercial cleaning provider who delivered anything beyond the basics. So, if you’re sceptical, I get it. But I’ve seen it happen, again and again. Not in theory. Not in marketing slides. In real businesses, with real outcomes. I’m talking about reduced costs, fewer complaints, happier staff, smoother operations—all from getting the commercial cleaning right. Here are four of those success stories. Behavioural Change + a Cleaner Culture at a Manufacturer This site was filthy when we took it on. The lunchroom (white tables, orange chairs) covered in ink. You’d walk in and think, “How has anyone been eating in here?” So we spent the first week just cleaning. Deep cleaning. I told my team, “Just keep going. Clean it properly every night. Trust me.” Sure enough, every morning the manufacturing team came in and left more handprints. More mess. But we just kept cleaning, night after night. It looked like a lost cause, but I knew what would happen. And about six weeks in, things started to shift. The handprints started disappearing. The mess started to drop off. A few months later, the client told me: “You were right. My guys (who used to not care at all) are now washing their hands before they go into the lunchroom.” Now look, we’re not talking about hygiene campaigns here. We’re talking about human behaviour. People respond to a clean space. But it didn’t stop at the lunchroom. The same staff out on the floor—people we never even went near—started cleaning their own equipment. Machines they used to let get grubby… they started wiping them down. Looking after them. Breakdowns dropped. Things just ran smoother. 🔎 Related: How to Evaluate Commercial Cleaner Websites (Examples + Tips) Was that purely because of us? I don't know. But I know what the site looked like before, and I know what it looked like after. And the only thing that changed was the cleaning. Fewer Complaints + Lower Cleaning Cost for A-Grade Office This client started out small. We cleaned two days a week. As the business grew, so did the cleaning coverage to three days a week. Then COVID hit. We added disinfection services, and eventually it became five full cleans a week. I told the client: “You’re going to notice the difference—not just in cleanliness, but in productivity.” And sure enough, after a few months, they told me the deep cleans they used to pay for at the end of the year? Didn’t need them anymore. We were keeping the site clean, every day. That alone saved them somewhere between $2.5–$3K annually. But the bigger win? Staff just stopped complaining. No more whinging about the microwave. No more frustration about the toilets. People walked in, sat at their desks, and got on with their day. The team flowed better. It just… worked. You can’t always measure that on a spreadsheet. But the moment that friction disappears, your whole business runs smoother. 40% Increase in Production for This Manufacturer This client was doing 60 tonnes of product a week, and they were handling the cleaning themselves. Problem was, the staff were holding back. They didn’t want to make a mess because they knew they’d have to clean it up. That slowed them down. 🔎 Related: The Promises We Make (+ Keep) to You at In-Tec Commercial Cleaning Once we took over, the mindset changed. They realised they had a proper cleaning company behind them. It didn’t mean they trashed the place—they just got on with it. They focused on their jobs instead of the mess. Six months in, they were producing 100 tonnes a week. That’s a 40% uplift, without hiring extra people or adding new equipment. Just by freeing their team up to do what they were meant to do. Our cost? It got absorbed into production. It became a nil effect. The client made more, without spending more. 25% Productivity Drop When Trying to Save Money on Cleaning Of course, not every cleaning decision leads to a positive return. When you cut costs by reducing your investment in commercial cleaning without thinking through what you’re actually losing, the result can be just as expensive, if not worse. That's why this last story is actually a cautionary tale. We had a large manufacturing site. We had a really strong culture, and the team was humming. The site was spotless, staff were happy, and productivity was solid. Then there was a leadership change. The new CFO wanted to cut costs, so they let us go. 🔎 Related: Why You Should Want a Contract with Your Commercial Cleaner They brought in a low-cost cleaning company, and handed the lunchroom and toilets to two internal staff who “put their hands up to do it.” Within two months, the place fell apart. Turnover skyrocketed. The manufacturing manager told me they were seeing constant issues on the floor. Productivity dropped by 25%. Why? Because no one wanted to eat in the lunchroom. No one wanted to use the toilets. Staff felt like they didn’t matter, and it showed. That’s what a bad cleaning decision can do. Just like a good cleaner can lift your business, a bad one can pull it apart. The Overlooked Ways a Great Commercial Cleaner Can Save + Make You Money When people think about ROI, they think big numbers—productivity lifts, fewer breakdowns, that sort of thing. But what they often miss are the little things. The quiet time sucks. The small inefficiencies. The stuff that doesn’t show up in a budget line, but adds up fast. Let me give you two examples. We had a client with a team of high-paid architects. Around 80 of them. Now, one thing that had been missed in the task list at their new site was collecting coffee cups from desks. The old cleaner used to do it, we weren’t asked to—but after a couple of weeks, the senior team said: “This isn’t working, we need those cups collected.” So I quoted it: about an hour and a half of extra labour per day. Roughly $70 a day. They hesitated. I said: “Alright. Let’s do the maths. You’ve got 80 staff. Let’s say they each take 10 minutes a day to drop their cup back, load the dishwasher, maybe chat a bit in the kitchen, get distracted. 80 times 10 minutes? That’s 800 minutes. Over 13 hours. What’s that cost you?” They worked it out. About $700 a day. They signed the change order on the spot. It’s the same with facilities managers. I’ve seen managers spending two and a half hours a week chasing cleaning issues. At $100 an hour, that’s $250 gone every week. And that’s not fixing the problem, that’s just patching it. But if you paid a cleaner $150 more to do the job properly? You’d actually save $100 a week. That’s $5,000 a year back in your pocket. 🔎 Related: 6 Commercial Cleaning Cost Factors That Influence Pricing (+ Examples) And don’t forget asset maintenance. I had one client who hadn’t painted a site in 10 years, because we were properly removing marks from walls and looking after the space. Another site they managed, using a different cleaner, had been painted twice in the same time. Paint isn’t cheap. So yeah, those little things? They matter. And they cost you more than you realise. A Clean Site Doesn't Just Look Better, It Performs Better I remember seeing a study years ago—done on a manufacturing site in Canada. They brought in a new cleaning company, implemented better cleaning processes, even introduced Sano into the mix. And over a six-month period, sick leave dropped significantly. Now, it took a while for them to figure out what changed. HR dug into it. Looked at the seasons, the staffing mix. But the only thing that had shifted was the cleaning company and their systems. That was it. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If your site’s properly cleaned (desks wiped, bins emptied, toilets done, floors vacuumed), your team just gets on with it. There’s no mental drag. No frustration. No standing around saying, “Why is the microwave still dirty?” It removes friction from the day. And when you remove friction, people work better. This matters even more now. We’re in a post-COVID world, where companies are trying to bring people back into the office. If you want them to come back—and stay productive—you’ve got to give them a space that’s worth turning up to. That starts with cleanliness. That’s how you build trust. It’s basic. But it’s powerful. And most businesses miss it. The Most Meaning Example of ROI? A Car Dealership Where People Started to Care Now we've already covered instance with large financial returns from an investment in commercial cleaning, like the manufacturing site that jumped from 60 to 100 tonnes a week. That’s massive. But if you asked me which story has stuck with me the most, it’s the dealership we’ve been cleaning for the past few years. This one matters because it wasn’t just about money. It was about the people. When we first came onto this site, the staff were unhappy. Lunchrooms were filthy. Toilets were a mess. They didn’t want to be there. And you could feel it. But we cleaned the place up—properly—and the shift was almost immediate. Now? They respect the space. They take pride in the workplace. If something’s missed, they bring it up—not because they’re complaining, but because they care. They want the site to stay clean. They want it to feel good. 📊 Read the Full Case Study: Car Dealership Achieves $480,000 ROI, 11% Productivity Gain with In-Tec The dealer principal said to me not long ago, “Staff aren’t leaving like they used to. They’re staying.” And he knows exactly why. Because he’s made it clear to his team that this space matters. That they matter. He’s investing in keeping the place clean—and they’ve noticed. It’s not complicated. People feel appreciated. And when they feel appreciated, they give more back. He told me he’s seen a 10 to 12% increase in productivity since we took over. He reckons the only thing he changed was the cleaning. On his payroll numbers, that works out to a $480,000 net return. Yes, the ROI was there in black and white. But for him (and for me), what really mattered was seeing a team that actually wanted to come to work. You Want Long-Term Value, Not Short-Term Savings We’ve talked a lot about ROI, and about what a great cleaning partner can deliver. But what happens when you make the wrong call? What happens when you choose based on price, not value? Recently, I spoke with a potential client in the wellness industry. I said to them: “If 100 clients walk through your door every day, and your space isn’t up to the standard they expect—and you lose just 10 of them—what does that cost you?” They hadn’t even thought of it that way. But that’s how it works. Your customers won’t always complain. Sometimes they just don’t come back. And when it comes to your team? A dirty lunchroom, a smelly toilet, a microwave no one wants to use... it wears people down. They won’t say anything at first. But then one day, they’re gone. Staff turnover. Poor morale. Drop in output. All of it costs you. That’s why if you want long-term value—not just short-term savings—you’ve got to find a cleaning company that knows how to clean. Not just wipe surfaces, but really clean. A commercial cleaning company that uses employees, not contractors. That puts outcomes in writing. That does audits. That backs themselves. 🔎 Related: How to Evaluate the Accountability of Your Commercial Cleaner (+ Examples) And when you ask them to explain their task list, their pricing, their scope—if they get cagey or vague, that’s your red flag. A real cleaning partner should be able to tell you what they do, how they do it, and what you’ll get in return. Simple as that. Because yes, your cleaner should be a profit centre. You should be able to look at what you’re spending and see what you’re getting back. Maybe it’s fewer sick days. Maybe it’s lower staff turnover. Maybe it’s just that your team walks in every morning and gets to work without needing to chase someone down about the microwave. That’s ROI. That’s what you should expect. And that’s what the right cleaning company will deliver. If you're interested in learning more on how to choose the correct commercial cleaning partner for your organisation, you can download our guide, 10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Commercial Cleaning Company. Or you can contact us at any time with your questions, or to start a conversation about how we may be of service to you.
