If you have been to an English office, factory or even a warehouse you will notice their emphasis on clean and hygienic workplaces. British employers understand that a clean and hygienic work environment leads to better productivity and lesser sick leaves per employee per year.
Rising unemployment rates in certain areas of the UK like Bradford where unemployment rates can be as high as 25% or more force people to form cleaning companies and go looking for commercial cleaning contracts based on their home cleaning experiences only. However, they fail miserably when they face competition from professional cleaning companies powered by state of art cleaning equipment and technology.
Better cleaning requires better equipment, better cleaning supplies, better adherence to standards which change drastically with improvements in technology and changes in laws of the land. A successful cleaning company will need to stay up to date with these updates and adopt changes in hardware and practices accordingly.
Technology to manage cleaning manpower better for higher productivity
A common problem faced by managers in a janitorial services facility is personnel and time management. If a team of 4 cleaning staff and one cleaning vehicle with equipment spends 3 hours per task instead of allocated 2 hours they lose at least one task a day and about 25 tasks a month, which is a huge productivity loss.
Today, there are apps powered by GPS and phone tracking that enables live communication between ground operations team and managers at the office that helps reduce the slacking time and facilitate better decision making. This helps reduce labour cost and improves profit margins.
Automating cleaning tasks with Machines and Equipment
British roads are now workplaces for automatic road sweeping units that drive automatically and clean to a much higher degree of perfection than ever before. These machines are able to remove chewing gums from roads, pick stray nut/bolts, segregate different types of waste and do the regular job of road sweeping as well.
According to Westfield AutoSweep, “the company building these vehicles, trials are about to begin at Greenwich Living Lab, Birmingham Airport, London Heathrow Airport, Manchester Airport Group, Trafford Centre, Media City Manchester soon.”
According to Mr Charles Chisholm – CEO of Future Cleaning Service, a leading Commercial cleaning company in UK employing over 1,800 people, “such futuristic technology is not here to take away the jobs of cleaning personnel but to make their job easier.”
Green Cleaning Technology
To achieve spotless cleaning vigorous cleaning is done, but this leads to damage to items and surfaces due to the presence of harsher chemicals in the cleaning supplies. Now, there is a growing awareness towards environment-friendly green chemicals that are softer on the surfaces and degrade easily without polluting soil and water resources.
Smartly choosing green and safe cleaning supplies can keep a cleaning company one step ahead of their competitors still neglecting green cleaning technologies. You may also receive significant marketing boost and govt subsidies because of adherence to green technologies. Facility management personnel are also getting used to these green cleaning methods.
Take away
This is the latest trend among British Cleaning companies to stay competitive in the already fierce cleaning and janitorial services market. Those that cannot rise upto the occasion and adopt new cleaning technologies will fail the competition and crash out. So, new technologies in hardware, software (for management) and cleaning supplies need to be adopted early by all those who are serious about their businesses. Nationwide cleaning, Future Cleaning Services, Thompson Local, FastKlean etc are already doing a great job in this segment and setting great examples for smaller companies to emulate.
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