5 Ways to Keep Cleaning Teams Healthy and Productive
Those responsible for busy in-house facility cleaning operations or contract cleaning businesses face a common workforce challenge.
Cleaning workers can be asked to work long shift patterns, perform consistently within a physically and mentally draining working environment, and do so using heavy and cumbersome cleaning equipment.
As a result, valued cleaning staff may decide to leave their jobs. For others, the consequences of workplace-related physical injuries and health issues, such as muscle or joint strains, mean they are unable to work for extended periods of time.
This can affect cleaning operational success in sectors such as education, where any compromise to cleaning efficiency can be especially problematic. Heavily used communal areas in schools and colleges, for example, demand effective cleaning regimes to keep staff, students, and visitors protected, as well as to mitigate the potential for slips and trips from uncleaned areas. Reduced workforce availability can make matching these expectations challenging. Which is why tackling the underlying causes of labor disruption, and unwanted exposure to workforce weakness, makes good operational, productivity and safety sense.
So, how can facility cleaning operations and contract cleaning businesses access workforce-oriented solutions to help alleviate these ongoing pressures?
1. Workforce Support
Labor costs make up a significant portion of a cleaning operation’s costs. As such, hiring the right people for the job, and retaining skilled staff, is crucial. Doing so means taking into consideration different team members’ skill levels and physical capabilities for each task before scheduling, as well as taking care of them through the cleaning equipment provided.
2. Specify Smart Cleaning Solutions
Historically, cleaning equipment design has focused primarily on cleaning performance. Technology enhancements have long prioritized improvements in key functional areas, such as cleaning solution use, down pressure and water pick up. This has resulted in machine development typically placing the equipment at the center of thinking, not the individuals using it.
Emerging solutions, which offer intuitive, adaptable, easy-to-use, and ergonomically designed communal cleaning machines, are helping to address the physical challenges employees deal with. These solutions tackle the disruptive and costly staffing issues cleaning teams face by delivering enhanced health and safety-based cleaning outcomes. They also drive productivity improvements for commercial success by enabling tasks to be completed more quickly.
3. Look for Specifics
Next-generation functionality must connect with cleaning employee needs, be truly personalized, and mitigate against physical discomfort and potential employee injury. This will reap dividends in terms of key workforce metrics, such as staff engagement, loyalty, and job satisfaction.
Look for machine solutions encompassing personalized digital control interfaces, which can be programmed specifically for the individual, with the convenience of PIN code access. This will help users quickly prepare for the work needed and have confidence that their particular skill level has been catered for.
Functions such as chemical and water use can also be automatically managed by perceptive machines, ensuring the right level of expensive materials and precious resources is used for the cleaning task at hand.
4. Stop Working Stresses
When it comes to ergonomics, design can also help address the root cause of many of the physical ailments that are endemic across the cleaning sector. Businesses can specify machines that provide pre-programmed digital interfaces, which power tailored adjustments that cater for the individuality of the user and, for example, align correctly with their height and strength.
Ergonomic benefits with built-in flexibility can alleviate injury potential with machine useability tailored to the employee. This could mean the difference between a valued cleaning operative staying in the role or seeking alternative employment elsewhere.
5. Look for Functional Benefits
Look for built-in intuitive machine controls, which are pre-calibrated, as well as quick start functions, which enable jobs to be started on time to drive up productivity. Machines offering such advantages harmonize the physical and digital worlds, providing cleaning machines that truly support employees.
Developing a people-centric strategy for cleaning operations, one that places new and innovative machine design development as a fundamental component for the delivery of effective cleaning outcomes, will be key to operational productivity, safety, and commercial success.
Doing so offers a robust solution to the traditional cleaning workforce problems linked to physical exertion and musculoskeletal damage, which are major contributory factors to the current elevated levels of cleaning staff absenteeism and job defection.
