Being a self-employed commercial cleaner has some great benefits that allow you to work flexibly around your personal commitments.

You can be both employed and self-employed at the same time, for example, if you work for an employer during the day and run your own business in the evenings.

To find out  more about working for yourself; here is a useful link

https://www.gov.uk/working-for-yourself

What is great about being self-employed

Self-employment allows complete flexibility and control over what you earn

• This means that rather than have your hourly rate dictated to you, you can set your own rate. You can make your rates flexible, for example, you may have a rate for daytime hours, another rate for evening hours and a different rate for working weekends
• This gives you more control of your earning potential

Better Work/life integration

• This means you can set the hours you want to work rather than having to compromise to hours set for you
• If you have personal commitments; for example, you may take a family member swimming every Tuesday afternoon or have to drop off and collect children from school. Maybe you attend college or university 3 times a week or you have a daytime job and want extra work in the evenings only. You get to set the hours you are available to work as a self-employed commercial cleaner
• You can take extended annual leave and annual leave when you want it. If you need to take time off, you don’t need to account for other people in your team as you would do if you’re employed. You just need to give your commercial cleaning client notice of when you will be taking your holiday time and how long so they can make arrangements to get this time covered in your absence. 

Rewarding job satisfaction

• Being self-employed means you are the result of your hard work, you get the recognition for doing a great job and this gives such a great sense of job satisfaction. 
• You know the cleaning work will be up to standard because it has been done by you! There isn’t a risk of someone else letting the quality of cleaning down.

No day is the same

• Being a self-employed commercial cleaner means you get a lot of variety in the type of commercial cleaning jobs you take on.
• Because you can choose to source your clients through a commercial cleaning service, like Workplace Cleaning Solutions Commercial Cleaning, through your own marketing or referrals it means you get different types of business to work with
• Having different types of clients to clean for gives you the variety and challenges that keep your work interesting

Only work with the people you want to work with

• If you don’t like the client you are cleaning for, then you can leave as a self-employed commercial cleaner
• You do need to maintain your professionalism and work the notice agreed. Try and resolve any issues before leaving a client as consistency is an asset as a self-employed commercial cleaner
• You do have a choice to work with someone, if things are truly unbearable – you can choose not to work with them, this is typically not an option if you are employed.

Claim reasonable expenses

• As a self-employed commercial cleaning, you can claim reasonable expenses from what you earn
• This could be travelling costs, to and from each cleaning client
• Time for admin & marketing (things like time to do your expenses, submit invoices and post on social media)
• Cleaning material & equipment used to do your job

Things to consider when you are a self-employed commercial cleaner

• You can charge a higher hourly rate as a self-employed a commercial cleaner that an employed cleaner would typically get, however from this you need to account for setting aside a portion of that to cover an absence, like holidays or sickness
• You will need to submit a self-assessment, also known as a tax return each year. For more details on that click here https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns/who-must-send-a-tax-return
• You need to be self-motivated, as a self-employed commercial cleaner there isn’t a boss or team leader to make sure you get to work on time. You are responsible for your own time and getting the job done properly
• You may have more than one place of work as a self-employed commercial cleaner, you are responsible for getting to your clients to clean using either your own transport or public transport. For some employed cleaning roles, the employer has a cleaning van to take you to each cleaning job.
• You often have to work solo. As a self-employed cleaner, you may have to work on your own a lot or with just one or two other cleaners. Depending on the cleaning service, an employed cleaning role may mean you are part of a big cleaning team working together.

Apply to your local WPCS Branch for cleaning jobs