CMOS

Raising the Standard for Commercial Cleaning Across New Zealand and Australia

Building a Reputation Around a Simple Promise: Consistent Cleaning, Responsive Service and a Workforce Treated as the Foundation of Quality.

Commercial cleaning is at its best when almost nobody notices it. Offices open each morning ready for work, common areas remain presentable, waste disappears into the correct streams and facilities managers can turn their attention to everything else demanding their time. For CMOS – Clean My Office Space, achieving that apparent simplicity requires a sophisticated operation behind the scenes.

The company has evolved considerably since it was previously featured by Business View Oceania. CMOS now services 690 client sites, while weekly cleaning hours have risen from 1,800 to 1,900 in Wellington and from 1,100 to 3,000 in Auckland. Its Australian operation has also established a foothold, servicing 55 clients in Sydney.

That expansion is being supported by a streamlined senior leadership structure, two regional managers covering the company’s three cities, a recruitment manager, financial controller, and innovation officer. Additional account managers and cleaning supervisors have been introduced alongside specialist positions including daytime cleaning specialists and dedicated cover cleaners.

The objective is not simply to become bigger. It is to grow without losing the responsiveness and consistency upon which CMOS has built its market position.

Scale Without Losing the Personal Touch

CMOS primarily services commercial offices in metropolitan areas and business parks. Its customers range from office and facilities teams representing commercial tenants to property and asset managers working on behalf of building owners.

The company’s position in the market is deliberately pragmatic.

“We’re not the biggest provider out there, but we have scale to manage operations smoothly, and we’re small enough that we still care a lot about doing a good job,” Charles Laing, Regional Manager – Auckland & Sydney, notes. 

That philosophy becomes particularly important as the business crosses international boundaries. Wellington remains important to CMOS, but its comparatively limited size created a natural ceiling for a company seeking a dense concentration of premium commercial spaces. Auckland provided greater scale, while Sydney opened an entirely new growth market.

Entering Australia has required CMOS to learn the country’s employment environment, including New South Wales requirements and the Modern Award system. It has also revealed differences in customer behaviour. Sydney clients, for example, have responded particularly well to trial-clean offers, an approach that has generated less interest in Auckland and Wellington.

An Operating Model Built Around People

In an industry where competing companies can appear remarkably similar on paper, CMOS believes its operating model provides the meaningful distinction.

Every cleaner is employed directly by the company. CMOS does not rely on contractors or franchise its operations, with employees paid applicable award rates in Australia and the MECA rate in New Zealand. It is a deliberate structure intended to improve workforce stability and, ultimately, consistency at client sites.

“You can’t build consistency on a workforce that turns over every few months, or that has an incentive to cut corners on someone else’s site,”  Laing states.

Clients are assigned named account managers rather than being directed through a call centre. Supervisors work alongside cleaning teams at night, allowing standards to be assessed while work is actually taking place, while dedicated cover cleaners provide trained replacements when regular employees are unavailable.

CMOS also views retention as a quality-control mechanism. An employee who has worked in the same building for years develops knowledge that cannot easily be reproduced through checklists. They understand how individual rooms are used, where recurring issues emerge, and what particular surfaces require.

“Consistency isn’t really a checklist problem; it’s a people-and-evidence problem,” Daniel Ralphs, Sydney Territory Manager, relays.

The evidence component comes through structured site audits undertaken by supervisors and account managers, supported by photographs and records accessible to clients through the company’s portal. The system allows CMOS to identify deteriorating standards through data rather than waiting for complaints.

That approach received external recognition when Account Manager Kylie Brown won the BSCNZ Clean Sweep award for her work on the Foodstuffs account.

Turning Cleaning into a Career

The company’s emphasis on people begins during recruitment. CMOS says it hires for character before technical ability, using the Ideal Team Player framework built around being “hungry, humble, and people smart.” New employees then receive formal induction and site-specific training from supervisors who will work alongside them.

With a significant migrant workforce, the company also takes visa and immigration responsibilities seriously, including providing support where appropriate. Employees are recognised for demonstrating company values as well as achieving measurable results.

For CMOS, retention sits upstream of the customer experience. Stable teams accumulate knowledge, stronger relationships form, and service becomes more predictable.

Responsiveness as the Product

Expectations among property and facilities managers have also evolved. CMOS says conversations that might once have concentrated heavily on price per square metre increasingly focus on risk, transparency and evidence.

Clients want documentation covering areas such as health and safety, insurance, right-to-work status, wage compliance and audit history. They also want confidence that people working inside their buildings at night are properly employed, vetted and inducted. Meanwhile, ESG and building-performance requirements are creating greater demand for accessible digital reporting.

Yet technology and documentation do not replace human responsiveness.

“Cleaning is invisible when it’s done well. Nobody walks into a clean office and thinks about their cleaning provider,” Ralphs says. “So responsiveness isn’t a soft add-on; it’s the product.”

Whether the problem is a spill, an absent cleaner, or a tenant complaint, CMOS aims to provide a real person who understands the site and then close the communication loop by explaining what happened and what has been changed.

The company also wants to identify problems before customers do. If a building requires additional cleaning hours or periodic work is becoming overdue, CMOS believes the client should hear that proactively. Even the Managing Director remains accessible to customers, retaining an owner-level connection as the company expands.

Sustainability That Works Building by Building

CMOS applies a similarly practical philosophy to environmental responsibility. Rather than imposing one standard sustainability program across every customer, cleaning and waste procedures are tailored to individual properties.

That might mean separating general waste, recycling and organics at one location, while another requires individual waste streams to be weighed and recorded for environmental reporting. More complex properties may require composting systems and procedures connected to broader environmental targets.

The model stretches from small offices with straightforward requirements to major commercial properties pursuing Green Star, NABERSNZ or internal ESG objectives. Staff training, equipment, reporting and servicing schedules are adjusted accordingly.

“We’re not going to claim cleaning is a green industry. But there is a lot within our control,” Peter Elliott, Wellington Regional Manager, expands. “Because our teams are physically handling waste streams every day, we can play a practical role in making a client’s environmental initiatives work.”

Sydney and the Changing Workplace

Looking ahead, CMOS sees two significant opportunities. The first is Sydney. Having established the foundations of its Australian operation and developed an understanding of the Modern Award system, its next challenge is achieving greater scale and profitability.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has provided knowledge and advice during the company’s establishment in Australia, while cleaning product supplier ABCO has supported its growth on the ground.

The second opportunity is being created by changes inside offices themselves. Hybrid working has made occupancy less predictable, while some customers increasingly prefer visible daytime cleaning instead of having virtually all work completed late at night. CMOS has responded by developing specialist daytime roles and expects demand for them to continue growing.

Ultimately, the company’s ambition is refreshingly uncomplicated.

“We would like a facilities manager to describe us as the provider they don’t have to chase,” Elliott notes.

 “Not the cheapest, not the biggest, but the one where the cleaning is handled, and they can get on with the other forty things on their list,” Laing concludes.

Behind that customer promise sits an equally important internal goal: to be known as a good place to work as a cleaner. CMOS sees the two ambitions as inseparable. Treat people well, build experience and accountability, provide systems that support them, and clients ultimately receive a more dependable service.

As CMOS grows from its New Zealand foundations into the much larger Australian marketplace, that connection between people and performance remains central. Expansion may increase the company’s footprint, but its long-term measure of success is whether cleaning remains one less thing its customers need to worry about.

AT A GLANCE

Who: CMOS

What: A commercial cleaning and facilities partner servicing offices, commercial properties, property managers and facilities teams.

Where: Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand, with expanding operations in Sydney, Australia.

Website: www.cmos.co.nz

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