Prime Time
Despite its popularity in other parts of Europe, daytime cleaning has not been taken up in the UK at the high levels that its proponents expected
by Guy Moody
It’s traditional in many industries. As the office staff clock off, the cleaners clock on. Only the last out of the door will be on nodding acquaintance with the army of people that ensure we start work at a clean desk the following morning. Our cleaners, and their methods, are out of sight, out of mind.
But in some European countries cleaning often takes place during the day, with the cleaners working alongside regular staff. Daytime cleaning has been seen as a way forward for the industry for many years, so much so that in January 2007 the topic prompted questions in the House of Lords about the cleaning routines at the offices of the DTI. However the take up of daytime cleaning has not been as widespread as its proponents believe it should have been.
And there are some very real incentives for daytime cleaning. According to Peter Lloyd, divisional managing director at Initial Facilities Services, daytime cleaning can offer a host of benefits for both the contractor and customer, including reduced costs, reduced security and energy consumption, increased productivity, enhanced customer care, and improved recruitment.
Keith Evans, project director OCS Cleaning and Environmental Services, expands on the latter. “The main advantages for an FM services provider are in staff recruitment and retention”, he says. “Full-time jobs with daytime hours are more attractive and there is far more interaction between customers and housekeeping teams which leads to greater job satisfaction. Operatives can also be given more detailed training opportunities during the longer shift patterns. Increased staff motivation inevitably leads to more productivity and higher standards.”
Lloyd says that one of the other benefits noticed by companies when switching to daytime cleaning is a change in customer and staff perception. The higher visibility of cleaning staff raises the overall awareness of the process, highlighting its importance and demonstrating the organisation’s commitment to standards. This can lead to a circle of continuous improvement as building occupants show more respect towards cleaners, especially when they see them working to keep the building clean, so greater care is often taken by staff and visitors to keep the building clean as a result.
According to Evans daytime cleaning also helps cleaners to identify areas of heavy use and plan to reduce unnecessary work, so daytime cleaning means much more than cleaners simply changing their hours and working to the same routines.
But to get the best from daytime cleaning requires robust communication between cleaners, their managers and the client. As Evans says: “With cleaning teams and clients on site at the same time communications are more effective, problems can be ironed out quickly and the cleaning operation is better managed with more flexibility and opportunity for introducing new methods.” Jeremy Waud, managing director at Incentive FM, agrees adding that daytime staff will need to be more communicative and flexible in the way they work, especially around people and meetings.
Some sources in the industry believe that turnover rates for part-time cleaning staff exceed 100 per cent. Daytime working should reduce these rates considerably and this will help to establish relationships between cleaners and regular staff. Peter Smith, managing director of Advance Cleaning, sees a big advantage developing from having a regular cleaner, noting that as the relationships develop people will gain the confidence to say (to the cleaner), “leave my office today, but give it a real going over tomorrow when I’m not here.” And crucially for maintenance of health and safety standards, Darren Timon, at Aroma Cleaning, points out that cleaners on site can provide a much quicker response to spillages, “crucial in this trip, slip and fall culture”.
But despite all this, there hasn’t been a rush of organisations to sign up. According to Andrew Large, chairman of the Cleaning and Support Services Association, there appears to be a reluctance to accept daytime cleaners by some workers in the client industry. Some he argues, would rather leave a mess to be dealt with when they have gone home and he believes that the presence of cleaners on site makes workers feel that they have to take more responsibility for their own environment, a responsibility that they simply don’t want.
There is sympathy within the cleaning industry for this view, and Smith says that some sectors of industry can be very dismissive of having cleaners in during the normal working day. The reasons can be difficult to pin down, there are obvious issues over noise or perceived breaches of confidentiality, but to some the idea of having cleaners in their working environment goes against the image they are trying to cultivate.
There’s also a downside in terms of staffing costs. Full-time, professional, cleaners who both look and act the part will be more expensive than their evening colleagues. Waud believes that hourly rates for daytime cleaners are higher, full time staff operate in a different labour market to part timers and rates will reflect the extra skills required. For an organisation looking purely at the bottom line a daytime option may appear, at first sight, to be the expensive option.
And what do cleaners themselves make of the proposal? Asked if daytime cleaning was to be introduced in the DTI, Lord Truscott relied that 87 per cent of the cleaning workforce, of whom 70 per cent worked part-time early in the morning, said that they were either “very satisfied”, or “satisfied”, with their hours of attendance. No great pressure from the workforce to make it happen then.
Last year, Large concluded an article in FM World, on the pros and cons of daytime cleaning, by saying “The rewards for everybody are clearly to be seen”. He added, by way of a caveat, that a leap of faith may be necessary for the cautious. So far, it seems, the cautious have yet to jump.
Guy Moody is a freelance journalist
