Ways of Keeping Your
Cleaning Contract Refreshed
Regional Management – a Pivotal Role
Balancing priorities
The Regional Manager balances service levels with cost, creating the best environment for optimum productivity. Whilst this can look simple in a bid document, dealing with staff problems on a wet night in January is another matter. Managers must cope with sickness, absenteeism,
complacency and lack of motivation, invariably in TUPE inherited staff. If they are not careful the only time they will be seen is when something has gone wrong, portraying them as a reactive, negative entity.
Time
It is important that your contractor limits the number of your
Technology
Technology is crucial to support Regional Managers. Portable devices can give access to a range of information, from time and attendance systems to machine repair tracking, whilst streamlining staff vetting processes. A web based Quality Management Programme can enable managers to identify and remedy operational failings quickly, making high quality management instantly transparent to the client.
Support
Of course this requires a high level of support from a dedicated administrative team, giving managers total confidence that if they reassure a client that a job will be
Your contractor’s Regional Manager plays a pivotal role in keeping your contract refreshed.
Positioned between you, the Facilities Manager, the staff and the contractor’s director,
managers must deal with a pressures from all directions.
even with the best of intentions, contractors can let standards drift. This white paper
identifies 6 key areas to keep in focus to ensure you get the best from your contractor.
Think of the Staff
2
Morale
It is important that your Regional Manager reviews the contract regularly, internally and with you, to identify potential improvements. Throughout the contract staff review meetings will reap feedback and keep them informed. As well as keeping useful information flowing, these help to maintain morale and ensure staff feel valued. Additionally, it is inevitable that staff get jaded repeatedly doing the same task, so the areas cleaned and times worked should be varied to break repetition and maintain interest.
Quality
A Quality Management Programme must collate and control data from objective quality checks, giving your manager high levels of detail, so the slightest quality drift is noted and remedied. Even before this happens, new initiatives and contract reviews should ensure your contract maintains its dynamism.
Education
Educating staff on the context of the contract is valuable. For example, in a production unit, your contractor might arrange a presentation on how the production line works. Whilst maintaining interest this enhances ‘ownership’ and makes clear why certain procedures are critical.
Complacency amongst cleaning staff is natural, but that does not mean you have to accept it. It is in everybody’s interest to keep the contract dynamic.
However well cleaning is carried out, it is going to be undone, repeatedly.
This is the nature of the job, but it has a psychological impact on staff which can result in
complacency and quality drift.
Quality Management Programme
3
Every mark, every scuff
The right QMP will give your contractor’s managers and supervisors an unparalleled overview, enabling them to drill down to every mark, every scuff, in every room. Information can be accessed on each building, then by floor, by zone and then by room.
If a scuff mark is found, it is photographed and its position
noted. And so on throughout the building when, before the manager leaves, the reports are online where they are available to both the contractor, for remedial work and you for a detailed snapshot of Quality Success Percentages. Quantified information will give you a clear understanding of the status of your contract, enabling your contractor to rectify drift at an early stage and enabling you to report on success levels at a moment’s notice.
Without a comprehensive Quality Management Programme contract decline is a virtual
certainty. A QMP will make objective physical checks, but collating and controlling data, then
reporting on inspections is a major challenge so it is essential to assess the agreed statistical
quality levels regularly over the life of the contract.
For QMP purposes Temco Facility
Services is the sole UK user of
SmartInspect
TM, a US based service
that gives Facilities Managers
astonishing levels of contract status
detail. SmartInspect
TM, combined with
comprehensive Service Level
Agreements and Key Performance
Indicators, gives Temco a significant
advantage over its competitors.
This includes the following example
dashboard report:
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Periodic Cleaning
4
Cost v perception
This is no better illustrated than with carpets, where a deep clean might cost 4% of annual cleaning costs, but if carried out at the right frequency the result will be very high impact. Your contractor must therefore balance cost and perception. As a minimum a full annual carpet cleaning is advisable, with walkways cleaned every six months. Leave it longer you will almost certainly need to spend more to get them back.
Get it right and your carpet (or curtains, or soft furniture) will look good and last longer, improving the overall perception of the cleanliness of your building. Get it wrong and you get the reverse.
Every contract needs periodic elements, whether it is deep cleaning of kitchens and toilets, IT or
window cleaning. Getting the frequency right is critical; too much and you waste money, too
little and you might never get it back up to standard. The key is vigilant management.
At Temco Facility Services managing periodic work is critical, but they are wary of rigid systems.
Naturally periodics are built into contracts, but Temco have a dedicated member of staff
maintaining a Periodic Review Schedule. This means eyes on site will ensure that every element
is regularly scrutinised to ensure standards are uniformly high, and if, for example, a kitchen deep
clean is required sooner than scheduled, it can be put in hand.
This way no area will get too bad and perceptions of cleanliness will be consistently high
throughout the contract.
Celebrating Sub Contractors
5
When the fit is right the main contractor will benefit
from working with genuine specialists, with all that
goes with it, from the enthusiasm for the job, to the
savings that can be made from expert knowledge and
specialist equipment.
Even the largest providers of facility services use sub
contractors, not least because subs do not bear the
burden of complacency that can bedevil in house
divisions, and of course they are an essential element
to growing mid market providers. But what makes a
successful partnership?
For Temco the first step is to identify the right contractor for the right job, so a full investigation of
its core competencies is vital.
They look for a good cultural fit that mirrors their own values and integrity, focusing on quality,
looking for companies that provide clients with the same level of transparency. Then it is about a
balance of competence and service. Good chemistry is vital, especially when re-engineering a
contract to enhance productivity, as two points of view are always valuable.
Sub contractors working with Temco must also adhere to their quality management system based
on carefully defined KPIs and Service Level Agreements, together with a range of policies and
their health and safety management system.
Sub contractors are not always viewed in a positive light, but this stigma is erroneous.
Professionally handled they can form part of a highly competitive business model.
Careful How You Cut
6
Get cuts wrong and the consequences can be
disproportionately negative, sometimes ending up costing more than has been saved. This is no better demonstrated than when carpet deep cleans are cut, thereby shortening the life of the carpet. Even more serious can be insensitive cuts to a settled, experienced workforce. Experienced staff give more opportunities to be flexible – more opportunities to be efficient.
The problem tends to arise when cuts are made blind, perhaps by someone who does not understand the ramifications.
