How We Empower Employees for the Future
Some people reading this blog may have preconceived notions about cleaning companies, and ‘cleaners’ in general. We have even come across businesses and clients who initially felt guilty hiring ‘cleaners’. They envision them to be underpaid individuals who have no choice but to do the literal dirty work for them. For some companies in the UK, this fact may ring true. However, at Spotless we empower our employees for the future. Our cleaning operatives benefit from a culture of innovation and tools that support their work with us.
Challenging Stigma in the Cleaning Industry
Representation in television and film paints the life of a cleaner as penniless and miserable. Documentaries such BBC’s Secret Life of Cleaners depicts a suffering class of people. Considering this, it’s no wonder we feel pity when catching a glimpse of our office ‘cleaner’. We see them as poor, skill-less, and overall luckless individuals who are trapped in a job they hate:
Why else would they choose to clean?
We combat these industry conditions and stigma in our business through our cleaning operatives. They are confident at what they do and provide the highest quality service to our clients. Contrary to media depiction, our operatives have more autonomy over their jobs in comparison to most office-based workers. Their job works around their life, not the other way around. Some individuals are parents needing hours around childcare, or semi-retired individuals who work for a social life and extra cash. We even have young people who work around their schedules – instead of sacrificing their Saturdays to tend a bar until the early hours. Our culture and other tools ensure that our cleaning operatives are passionate, empowered, and happy in their roles.
Living Wage Accredited
We are accredited service partners of the Living Wage Foundation. That means we price all our jobs with a Real Living Wage option. Over 250+ of our clients pay our cleaning operatives the real living wage. We do not make any extra money as a business if the client chooses to have the additional cost of the living wage. Many of our clients are passionate that they can give our operatives the living wage. We are proud to provide the option as not only is it the right thing, but believe it motivates and retains the best operatives. It is also important to note that when we pay the national wage, we always paid the upper rate. We’ve never profiteered from paying less to anyone under the age of 24.
Our Culture of Innovation
We ensure we can empower our employees and our clients by promoting a culture of innovation from top to bottom of our business. Innovation is different for every level of our team. For our cleaning operatives, we use technology and other modern practices to ensure they can work to the best of their abilities. Our operatives have control over their hours, areas, and even their wages, to ensure they feel in control of their lives.
Here are some of the tools we use to ensure that our modern cleaning operatives are a far cry from miserable ‘cleaners’:
UComply for Safely and Responsibly Hiring
With UComply we can perform right to work checks and other authentication on the spot via mobile phone. This allows the simplest and most sustainable methods for our HR Team and our Employees during our recruitment processes.
Timegate for Time Control
Traditionally the cleaning industry would have employees and managers fill out paper time sheets. These were often scribbled, damaged, lost or even left incomplete. These are now a thing of the past; at Spotless we give more power to our employees via the Timegate app. Our employees can self-service when registering their hours into the app meaning there are less errors, better collaboration, and gives control over to our frontline cleaning operators. In addition, the app logs location when the employee signs in, and when they sign off. This allows the employee to have confidence that their hard work is being evidenced.
Wagestream for Financial Control
During the current financial climate in the UK, we wanted to prioritise our employee’s financial wellbeing by combining our Timegate app with Wagestream. Wagestream gives our employees live visibility over their earned pay, flexibility over when they can access this earned pay, and they have additional features to help promote financial stability for our employees. We believe that adding Wagestream to our employee support suite is another step towards us becoming the modern, innovative commercial cleaning company that we are striving to be.
As a UK business, we cannot stress enough the social responsibility that we feel towards our employees at all levels. Many of our managers, including our Managing Director Nicola Barbour, started out in their careers in one of our cleaning roles. We want to fight stigma around cleaning roles and give the best support to our employees. Our clients can be confident that not just their cleaning will be to a high standard, but they can also be proud that their cleaning is supplied by a company who genuinely care for their employees.
Want to work for us? You can submit an application or cv, or look at roles we have available in your area.