What is a housekeeping inspection checklist?
Housekeeping inspection checklists involve more than just cleaning, scrubbing, and picking up trash. In the workplace, housekeeping equals safety. Regular housekeeping inspections ensure that your workplace follows guidelines set by occupational health and safety organizations.
Housekeeping checklist template
3 reasons to use housekeeping inspection checklists
- Ensure safety at work by addressing hazards
- Promote efficiency through a well-organized workplace
- Standardize inspection practices, since all employees work from the same checklist
Table of contents
What is included in a housekeeping inspection checklist?
Housekeeping inspections are intended to help you avoid potential hazards in the workplace. To that end, it’s important your checklist include the most common safety issues that are present in workplaces. For each of these hazards, include instructions for removing it as well as the signs to look out for.
Slips, trips, and falls
Slips, trips, and falls are the leading cause of injury in the workplace. Without proper housekeeping, anyone is at risk from a slip, trip, or fall hazard. Your housekeeping inspection form needs to keep the workplace clean, orderly, and free of any germs. Some ways a housekeeping inspection checklist to prevent slips, trips, and falls include:
- Cleaning up slip hazards such as oil, grease, and water
- Clearing aisles and walkways of debris
- Installing warning signs in blind spot areas
- Replacing or repairing damaged flooring
- Placing anti-slip flooring or mats in high-risk areas
- Keeping work areas clean and uncluttered
Fire hazards
Fire hazards are anything that could cause your fire protection systems to malfunction, start a fire, or make evacuation difficult in the event of a fire. Avoid potential fire hazards at work by:
- Storing combustible materials in covered metal containers
- Disposing of combustible waste daily
- Limiting the amount of combustible materials in work areas
- Storing flammable material away from ignition sources
- Keeping obstructions at least 18 inches away from fire suppression systems
Dust accumulation
Flammable dust present in chemicals, dyes, fibres, pharmaceuticals, and plastics could cause explosions and lead to injuries, property damage, or even death. During housekeeping inspections, ensure that dust accumulation does not exceed 1/32 of an inch in at least 5% of a room’s surface. Use a wet vacuuming system to control dust in your workplace.
Falling objects
Falling objects can lead to all sorts of workplace injuries, from bruises to concussions to broken bones. Use a housekeeping inspection checklist to address the risk of falling objects, for example by ensuring that tools and other materials are kept away from edges and elevated surfaces, by securing materials when they are stacked, or by placing them on flat surfaces.
Cluttered walkways
Too much clutter in the halls can make it difficult to navigate or evacuate during emergencies. That’s why any workplace housekeeping checklist needs to make sure tools and other materials are properly stored. Avoid obstructing any aisles, doorways, stairways, electrical panels, or emergency exits.
At the same time, don’t let tripping, fire, or explosion hazards accumulate in your storage. Ensure there is no pest infestation in storage areas. Keep electrical closets free of clutter to avoid blocking electrical panels.
Getting the most out of a housekeeping inspection checklist
Employee participation
A good housekeeping inspection program encourages workers to participate and help maintain a clean and orderly environment. Everyone is responsible for keeping workstations tidy, reporting safety hazards, and cleaning up spills as soon as possible.
Supervisors should assign employees daily housekeeping activities according to the items included on your housekeeping inspection checklist.
Proper training
Inspection checklists alone aren’t enough to ensure that housekeeping tasks are done correctly. A good housekeeping inspection program is paired with training, to make sure all your staff understands the work involved. Semi-regular coaching and training ensures your employees know exactly how to perform assigned tasks. This way, a workplace housekeeping checklist will have the most impact.
Effective communication
As a manager, you need to have strong communication skills in order to communicate how high of a priority diligent housekeeping is. Once your staff is on the same page as you, they’ll conduct housekeeping inspections more thoroughly.
Scheduling
Any housekeeping checklist should indicate how regularly inspections are scheduled.
The frequency of housekeeping depends how much debris or contaminants your workplace produces. But a good rule of thumb is to inspect and clean workspaces before the end of every shift. This reduces the risks of injury or sickness and saves time on cleaning later.
Make sure employees have enough time to finish their housekeeping duties; i.e., don’t try to schedule it all at the end of a shift.
Goal setting
Setting goals and expectations is necessary for both deep and light cleaning. Clear goals and a vision for how the workplace should look inform your housekeeping inspection process.
During housekeeping inspections, workers and supervisors need to discuss established housekeeping standards. Regular inspections help you improve processes such as scheduling waste disposal or figuring out when to replace mats.
The goals of your housekeeping inspection can vary depending on the type of inspection you’re performing. Common inspection types include:
- Formal or planned inspection – This inspection is done using a formal housekeeping inspection checklist created according to the workplace’s needs. Checklist items are not permanent. They can and should change depending on the results of previous inspections. You should always include a hazard classification system and assign individual hazards rankings according to their severity.
- Informal or on-the-spot inspection – This is usually done by supervisors, managers, or health and safety representatives. Inspectors will observe the area while employees are working, watching for unsafe behavior or conditions. Their observations are noted in the housekeeping inspection form.
- Specialized inspections – These are conducted by specialists, namely those familiar with he equipment in your workplace. You’ll need to hire experts to check boilers, electrical equipment, ventilation systems, and fire suppression systems.
- Regulatory inspections – This type of inspection is usually done according to regulations set by the Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA).
Organizing housekeeping inspection checklists with workflow automation software
Planning, implementing, and improving good housekeeping practices is easiest when you use workflow automation software like Lumiform to manage things. The combination of desktop and mobile app allows you to easily create, assign, perform, and analyze inspections.
Say goodbye to paper checklists and create custom digital forms with the form builder so you can instantly duplicate and reuse them. Complete these checklists from anywhere in your workplace thanks to the mobile app, even when you’re offline. Simply download your created checklist (or a premade housekeeping template) and you’re ready to go.
Using Lumiform helps you automate and standardize the inspection process. That way, you can be sure ech inspection was exactly as thorough as the last, no matter who performed it.
In addition to making inspection themselves simpler, Lumiform allows you to:
- Easily report and quickly resolve issues as you encounter them straight from the mobile app
- Streamline administration and task management through a central dashboard where you can review, update, and assign tasks at will
- Document everything automatically, since all completed inspections are saved to and securely stored in the cloud
- Use automated, customizable weekly and monthly reports for an easily digestible visualization of inspection results you can use to plan improvements
FAQ
Housekeeping inspection checklists are what businesses use to ensure there are no safety hazards present in a workplace. They empower employees to take an active role in checking for, reporting, and ultimately removing risk factors.
While every housekeeping inspection checklist will vary based on the specific workplace being addressed, they should always include the common safety hazards like fire safety, slips, trips, and falls, falling objects, and blocked emergency exits
Getting the most out of the inspection process means being communicative with your employees, providing them the necessary training to use housekeeping inspection checklists correctly, setting clear goals, and establishing an inspection schedule.
