Colorado Mesa University’s custodial services is lacking staff members and the procedure for office cleaning has changed, but there is no connection between the two, according to CMU’s Director of Media Relations Dana Nunn.
Last week an email was sent out to faculty and staff alerting them of a change in how often their offices will be cleaned starting Oct. 9.
“Rather than coming into my office every night vacuuming, which it doesn’t need, emptying my trash, which it doesn’t need daily,” Nunn said. “Instead, they will do it weekly.”
Nunn said this was done in an effort to provide sufficient cleaning to high-traffic areas like the University Center and Tomlinson Library, without increasing costs of adding new employees.
Custodians will utilize a weekly schedule to clean faculty and staff offices, going from building to building. However, faculty members can still have their trash emptied if they put their trash can outside their office, and can still have their offices cleaned if they display a sign on their door handle, which will be provided to faculty soon, according to Nunn.
These changes were not done in relation to a lack of staff for the custodial services department; this new office-cleaning procedure was successfully attempted over the summer, according to Nunn.
Currently, CMU is lacking 10 members for the custodial staff, a vacancy amount that is “a little more than usual” Nunn said. Normally, the custodial services department can expect six to seven vacancies, according to Nunn. CMU has 63 full-time custodians on their staff.
Nunn attributed the “fairly high” turnover at custodial services to the large amount of students on their staff, which can be expected to depart as they graduate.
The university has just gone through the search process to fill the vacancies and are expecting them to be filled within the next month, according to Nunn.
Nunn said that it is too early to tell if the custodial office-cleaning change has made an impact, and if it is negative, they will re-evaluate.
