Thank Your Cleaner Day happens once a year, but it’s always a good time to think about the ways you can recognize your frontline employees — the individuals who keep workplaces and public buildings clean, safe and hygienic — year-round. After all, a meaningful recognition program is just good business, especially when it comes to retaining talent.

In the spirit of sharing good ideas, BSCAI asked a few of its members how they recognize their cleaning staff. Take a look at their responses below.

“We put our cleaners, who we call team members, first in everything we do. We serve them so they can effectively serve our customers. We have numerous recognition, incentives, awards, and growth opportunities,” says Tim Murch, CBSE, president of 4M Building Solutions. Recognition programs include handwritten thank you notes to team members from Murch, a Good Works Program that finds and recognizes team members doing things right, gift card drawings, growth and development opportunities with the company’s Lead 360 Program, Safety Bingo with over $13,000 of winnings in 2024 to date, a culture of 360-degree teamwork, and more.

“I believe recognizing and celebrating our cleaners is essential to fostering a positive work environment,” says Patrick Comaskey, CEO of Direct Clean. “We celebrate milestones, like work anniversaries, to show our gratitude for their hard work and dedication.”

“This year we are doing a video thanking our cleaners, allowing clients to provide a thank you message, a message from our owners, local lunches on job sites, and collateral and materials to post at local job sites,” says Kristy Elmore, vice president of commercial operations and marketing at Harvard Maintenance.

At CleanOffice, Inc., a company with nearly 600 employees, recognition programs are led locally by territory managers. “We’ve allowed our territory managers to do lotteries to select one account from each of their territories,” says Greg Buchner, CBSE, president and CEO of CleanOffice, Inc. “The territory manager can then coordinate a fun event like a pizza party or a luncheon. Ideally the territory manager will spend time with the crew and, when possible, a leader of the management team will join. We've learned that spending time with our team members is sometimes the most valuable way of saying thank you.”

Does your company celebrate its employees in unique ways that others can learn from? Send a note to BSCAI editor Kristin Frankiewicz at kfrankiewicz@bscai.org.