The Team that Cleans up our Mess

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." 

Harry S Truman, 33rd President of the United States (1945-1953)

Have you ever really given a thought about office cleaners?

When we get to an office at the start of the day for work, or for a meeting, do we really ever think about the people that have cleaned it the night before?

The truth is that we generally don’t. We simply go about our day and fail to spare a thought about the room, how clean it is and who cleaned it. That doesn’t make us bad people at all. That’s just what happens. We take it all for granted that the office will be clean as it generally always is and we only think about it or notice anything when a room, area of office is unclean. And how often is that?

Now there will always be people who are exceptions to this rule and do spare a thought to the office cleaner. Perhaps this is because, like me, they have burnt the midnight oil and worked into the early morning hours at the office a few too many times and so have seen and actually met and even spoken with the office cleaning staff who materialise late into the night when everyone else has gone home.

Think about it for a minute. Think of a time when you left the office late and noticed that there were coffee mugs and take-away food packets littered around. You probably assumed that they would be cleared up by someone else and gone by the time you returned. And when you came back to the office in the morning, presumably there was no evidence of their past existence.

Imagine for a moment that they were still there. How would you feel?

The archetypical office cleaner usually appears long after the last employee has left the building and leaves long before anyone returns. They just get on with their job.

Like the teams of staff that occupy the same space during the daylight hours, each crew member is assigned specific roles and responsibilities as they systematically work through the office with their daily routine. They have had to go through some sort of training or even accreditation. They have their own hierarchy, communication procedures and safety protocols. The similarities don’t stop there either. They are supervised, performance managed and need motivation, support, guidance and encouragement to do what must often feel like a thankless job.

How hard must it be to do a job that most people rarely notice? Or not receive regular (or any) feedback other than complaints when one rubbish bin is not emptied, or a used coffee mug missed. For any cleaning team leader this must make it all the more challenging to motivate the staff and foster team spirit.

These cleaners that I refer to are a large group of people, on which we all depend. They do jobs most of us would not want to do. They quietly just go about their work to clean offices, hospitals and medical centres, shopping malls, airports (remember them!) and even our streets….

But as you probably suspected, this is not just a story about office cleaners. This is about everyone who does a job or task that you don’t see or witness, but probably just take for granted. The job is just done, by someone that you might not even know by name and will probably only ever notice when it is not done right.

This is more about the principle of respecting and appreciating others, not taking them for granted and taking the step to let them know that when you get the chance. After all, these ‘cleaners’ already have your tacit trust (and even respect) and generally deliver a consistent level of service and quality in their work. So much so, that it meets your needs and expectations to the point where you don’t even notice them. They are a powerful team of people on which you rely and as such they deserve greater acknowledgement.

I hope that you will see the parallels between the office cleaner and your own people and start to notice when colleagues, team members or peers do something right. Better still, I hope that you will feel motivated to give them feedback on what they have done well and ‘catch them doing something right’. Intuitively, you know the value of showing appreciation to others and what it will mean for them, just as what it means for you when you receive it.

Be a change agent and be part of a movement to reverse the unfortunate humanistic trait our species has of taking others for granted. This will in turn help foster team spirit, strengthen trust levels, build motivation and inspire others to do their best.

"A Team is not a group of people who work together, it is a group of people who trust each other." 

Simon Sinek