Commercial cleaning is a trusted-access business, even if it never feels like one. Your staff hold keys or entry codes, they work out of hours when nobody is watching, and the premises they clean are full of other people's information. That trust is the product you sell, and it is worth protecting as carefully as any van or vacuum.

The risk is rarely a dishonest cleaner. It is far more ordinary than that. A key that goes missing and is never reported. A shared entry code that half the town knows because it has not changed in three years. A laptop left logged in on a desk, or a stack of invoices and patient letters sitting in plain view while the bins get emptied. None of that requires bad intent to become a problem for your client, and by extension for you.

The controls that matter are boring and cheap. Keep a simple record of who holds which keys and codes, so you can tell instantly what to change if one goes astray. Change shared codes when a member of staff leaves, every time, without exception. And brief your teams on the one rule that covers most of it: do not touch what is on the desks, and if a screen is unlocked or papers are out, that is the client's issue to fix, not yours to tidy.

For firms cleaning solicitors, surgeries, accountants or anywhere handling sensitive records, it is worth putting this in writing. A short, honest statement of how you manage keys, codes and staff turnover is exactly what those clients are increasingly asked to show their own auditors. Being the cleaner who already has that answer is a quiet competitive advantage.