Due to COVID Two Things Are Ending in Professional Cleaning
We keep hearing that everything has changed due to COVID-19. This is certainly happening in the professional cleaning industry.
Further, two things that are changing, or should we say ending due to COVID, are for the benefit of everyone in our industry as well as for building owners and managers.
These are the following:
The End of "Visible" Cleaning
For decades, judgments about cleaning have always been based on appearances. "If it looks clean, it is clean," has always been the standard. In all too many cases, building owners and managers may not be that happy with the cleaning they are being provided, but determine, usually based on price considerations, that it is "good enough."
Today, primarily because of COVID, we know that how a surface looks has little or nothing to do with how healthy that surface is.
A healthy surface is free of soils and contaminants that could negatively impact human health. "Good enough" cleaning rarely makes the grade when cleaning is viewed in this light.
Further, the superficial appearance of a clean facility is no longer enough; cleaning has become a C-suite issue. Top executives are now responsible for their staff's health and welfare, continued business operations, brand reputation, and the bottom line. Whereas effective cleaning has played a relatively minor role in C-suite responsibilities in the past, it now has a commanding position.
Business leaders now view effective cleaning as one way to minimize company risks. This means effective cleaning is now a risk prevention strategy, helping to protect a company's operations, profitability, worker morale, and brand reputation.
In May 2020, when COVID-related cleaning and safety concerns surfaced at some Amazon locations around the world, employees threatened to stop working and organizations urged buyers to boycott the company. The result is the company invested $4 billion in employee safety measures and began an extensive – and expensive - advertising and public relations campaign to win customers back.
The End of Price-Based Cleaning
Cleaning has always been viewed as a both a necessity and a commodity. By this we mean that every building owner and manager knows they must take steps to keep their facilities clean.
But, because it is also viewed as a commodity, this means these same building owners and managers have invariably considered most cleaning contractors - and the cleaning services they provide their customers - to be interchangeable.
The result is, when hiring a cleaning contractor, the deciding factor is price. If one contractor says they would charge $10,000 per month to clean a facility and another says they would only charge $6000, it is pretty easy to guess which one is hired.
But that is over with COVID. We have transferred from price-based cleaning to quality-based cleaning.
Many building owners and managers have already concluded from experience that hiring a cleaning contractor based on a low price can be the start of an array of problems. But now, again due to COVID and the need to stop the spread of infection, we just cannot take the chance.
View quality cleaning as an investment. It pays dividends by protecting the health of building users and by keeping businesses and facilities functioning.
??This is just a portion of our recently published White Paper. To read more, click here.
Retired. Yet still busy. Been working very hard to balance time between my company, beach days,lots of, golf, riding my Harley, travel, occasional day drinking, hanging with friends and live-in grandkids. Lots of fun
4 年I would like to add that having started in this business 43 years ago, and having traveled weekly for 39 of those 43 years, that I too, have mixed feelings. On one hand it has to be satisfying for those of us who have worked so hard over the years to promote our industry and strived for cleaner facilities to see our efforts finally being paid attention to by the public. I have been traveling throughout the pandemic shut down, albeit on a much more focused and limited basis. It pleases me to see airplanes, hotels, rental cars, public restrooms etc. all being cleaned and being kept clean at levels they should have been all along. The airplanes and hotels have never been better!! However, it is too bad that it took a pandemic to finally bring this to the level it is today. Perhaps cleaning at the levels so many of us in this industry have professed to for years may have assisted in either avoiding or at least minimizing what we have been through. That said, I still see massive opportunity ESPECIALLY in public eating and drinking establishments for massive improvement. As recent as this week I have seen multiple workers in restaurants "sanitize" tables and bar tops using the same Teri cloth soil and bacteria laden towel. I personally will not rest until I see both this procedure end, along with someone mopping a floor with dirty water and we end those practices forever! The good news is that leaves all of us plenty of opportunity to educate, and educate, and train and train until we reach our goals!
Vice President of Sales at Fas-Trak Industries
4 年I often think of the paradigm shift that needs to occur. It is from products for process. This needs to occur more NOW than ever. Usually better process improves results and provides a solid ROI. A true win-win-win in the end.
SEO Consultant | I help cleaning and facilities services gain more qualified leads and clients by improving search engine ranking without spending money on paid ads.
4 年Great article, Rick! This article sends out the message of how cleaning processes have changed due to COVID, loud and clear. Thanks for sharing!
This should be the new normal going into the future. It’s up to us to educate the business leaders so they recognize that the flu, norovirus, bacterial infections including C-diff, etc. all cost them $billions and that proper cleaning/disinfecting is an investment, not just an indirect cost item to be procured from the lowest bidder. The conquest of COVID will not negate the importance of cleaning - now if we can get that message out there it may make a difference in the perception of the value we bring. IMO the ISSA should start doing PSAs to educate the public about the value of clean; bring it out of the closet into mainstream consciousness.
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4 年You’re spot on Rick VanderKoy love the content of this article. I’m curious if the industry believes these will be permanent changes or if all goes back to the way it was as the pandemic ends?