Costing a Night Cleaning Shift Against a Three-Year Robot Lease

Does a robot lease beat a night shift on cost?

It can, but the answer depends on the full annual cost of the shift, not the hourly wage on the offer letter. A fair comparison adds payroll taxes, supervision, turnover and the coverage a night crew sometimes fails to deliver. Then it sets that total against the fixed payment on a three-year lease.

This article works through that comparison with placeholder figures. Where a number comes from a public source, we name the source. Everything else is a stand-in. Swap in your own payroll register, supervisor hours and turnover history before drawing any conclusion.

Why is the hourly wage only the starting point?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the May 2025 median for janitors and building cleaners at 17.71 dollars per hour, or 36,840 dollars per year. The 10th percentile was 13.77 dollars per hour and the 90th was 24.17 dollars per hour. Those are national benchmarks, not what your facility pays, and BLS does not measure your supervision or turnover.

Still, the median is a useful anchor. One worker on five eight-hour nights a week works 2,080 hours a year. At the national median, that comes to about 36,837 dollars. Most budget reviews stop at that figure, and that is exactly why it hides the rest.

Which costs belong in the shift total?

Include every cost that exists only because a person works the shift. The starting list below covers most facilities, and you should add anything your payroll system tracks that we missed.

• Base wages, including any night differential your employment terms specify (placeholder rate)
• Employer FICA at 7.65 percent of wages, split into 6.2 percent Social Security and 1.45 percent Medicare
• State and federal unemployment taxes, which depend on your state and your claims history
• Supervisor hours spent scheduling, checking and signing off the crew, priced at a loaded hourly cost
• Turnover: recruiting, onboarding and the weeks before a new hire works at full speed
• Missed or unfilled nights, priced at what the uncleaned floor actually costs you

How do the placeholder numbers add up?

Use the BLS median as the wage base and apply the 7.65 percent employer FICA rate from IRS Publication 926. A vendor payroll guide estimates total employer burden at roughly 7.5 to 9 percent of wages for mid-wage employees once unemployment taxes apply, and higher for lower-paid roles. Treat the FICA line as a floor, not a ceiling.

For turnover, a Center for American Progress review of 30 case studies found a median replacement cost of about 21 percent of annual salary for non-executive roles. A Center for Equitable Growth brief pooled 31 case studies and reported a median of 23.5 percent of annual wage. Applying the 21 percent figure to the 36,837 dollar base gives about 7,736 dollars per replacement event.

Illustrative tally for one worker: wages about 36,837 dollars, employer FICA about 2,818 dollars, and one turnover event about 7,736 dollars. That totals about 47,391 dollars before supervision and missed nights. Replace each input with your wage, your tax rates, your actual turnover count and your supervisor's loaded hourly cost multiplied by the hours they spend on the crew.

What does the fixed lease payment compare against?

Service Robot Co. leases robots on a three-year term with one fixed payment, quoted after a site assessment. Because the payment is fixed, the math stays simple. Multiply the monthly figure by 12 for the annual cost, and by 36 for the full term.

Set the annual shift total against those 12 payments, then be honest about what the robot does not replace. A floor robot does not sign off a fire door, respond to an alarm or clear a blocked exit. Keep the supervisory hours tied to those tasks inside the shift total, or the comparison will flatter the lease.

How much is consistent coverage worth?

A crew that works most nights is not the same as coverage that runs every night. Count how many nights last year ended with an uncleaned floor. Then attach a cost to each one, such as a guest complaint, a slip-related claim, or a day shift pulled in at overtime. Your count replaces any figure we could offer here.

Ramp-up adds a hidden cost too. One older HR Morning article describes a new hire at about 25 percent productivity for weeks 1 to 4, 50 percent for weeks 5 to 12, and 75 percent for weeks 13 to 20. Use that pattern as a rough guide, not a benchmark for your site. Consistent coverage matters most where replacements are slow to find.

How should a facility team finish the worksheet?

Pull twelve months of payroll for the crew, the supervisor's actual hours on that shift, and every departure with its recruiting and training dates. Those three records replace most of the placeholders above.

Then request a site assessment. Our engineers map the floor, plan routes and identify where a robot fits, and that work produces the single fixed payment the comparison needs. Service Robot Co. is OEM-neutral. We select the machine that fits your floor across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service it through our nationwide US engineer network, so one vendor covers the whole lifecycle.

Run the worksheet twice: once with your real numbers, and once with the most pessimistic turnover figure you can defend. If the lease still comes out ahead in both runs, the decision holds. If it wins in only one, look harder at the coverage your crew actually delivers.