In-house versus contracted janitorial

Is in-house cleaning cheaper than a contract?

In-house looks cheaper on wages and usually is not cheaper on total cost, because the comparison is almost always drawn against the wage line rather than against the loaded cost.

The comparison people make is hourly wage against contract rate, and on that basis in-house wins every time. It is also the wrong comparison, because a contract rate includes a long list of things a wage does not.

What is actually in the cost of an in-house team?

The loaded cost of an in-house cleaner is materially higher than the wage, and the gap is made of payroll burden, equipment, supplies, management time and coverage.

• Payroll burden

  Employer payroll taxes, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance. Real and non-optional.

• Benefits

  Health, paid time off, whatever your employee handbook commits to.

• Equipment

  Purchase, maintenance and replacement of vacuums, floor machines, carts. Plus the capital sitting in them.

• Supplies and chemicals

  Purchasing, storage, inventory and the person doing that purchasing.

• Management time

  Hiring, scheduling, training, supervising and reviewing. This is the line nobody costs and it is usually the largest.

• Coverage for absence

  Somebody has to cover a call-out. With one or two employees, that somebody is often you.

• Turnover

  Recruiting and training cost, repeated. Cleaning roles carry high turnover regardless of who employs them.

• Specialty work

  Floor stripping, carpet extraction, high window work and post-construction still get contracted out.

When does in-house genuinely win?

In-house wins where the work needs continuous presence, deep building knowledge or security clearance, and where you already have the management capacity to run it.

Concretely: single-occupant buildings with secure or sensitive areas, facilities where the cleaner doubles as a light maintenance resource, and organisations that already run a facilities department with real supervision capacity.

It also wins when responsiveness matters more than cost. An in-house person can be redirected in thirty seconds. A contract has a scope.

When does contracting win?

Contracting wins on multi-building portfolios, on buildings needing specialty work, and anywhere the management overhead of employing cleaners exceeds what the organisation wants to carry.

The strongest case is portfolio scale. One contract across six buildings replaces recruiting, scheduling, supervising and covering absence in six places.

The second strongest is specialty capability. Floor care, high window work and post-construction cleaning each need equipment and training that no in-house team of two will ever justify owning.

How do you make an honest comparison?

Build the in-house number as a fully loaded annual cost including management time, then compare it against a contract priced to the same scope and the same frequency.

Two rules make it honest. Cost management time at a real rate, because the hours a facilities manager spends supervising cleaners are hours not spent on the building. And include the specialty work you will still contract out, since it belongs on the in-house side of the ledger too.

Run it as annual cost per square foot on both sides. It is the only basis on which the two options are actually the same question.