There’s been several key factors impacting the cleaning industry in recent years: COVID-19, environmental challenges, labor shortages, and more. The facility maintenance community strives to adapt quickly to ever-shifting requirements impacting their day-to-day operations while ensuring facilities are healthy, safe, and clean. Here’s what you need to know to keep your staff operating at the highest level.
What Changed?
The pandemic dramatically shifted the focus on how facility managers approach cleaning strategies. With a higher demand for efficient cleaning processes, features like dwell times and kill claims have significantly been impacted; sustainability is more relevant than ever, especially given environmental shifts, and labor retention and attracting new workers is a key issue within the industry due to economic uncertainty, supply chain issues, and in-person facility shutdowns.
For your facility operation to rise to the challenge, it’s essential to consider these factors for continued progress and innovation in 2023:
- The evolution of cleaning for improved health
- Sustainable cleaning practices
- Labor attraction & retention
Definition of a “Clean” Building
The COVID-19 pandemic instantly propelled the cleaning industry into the spotlight and forced facility maintenance professionals to carry out proactive strategies to combat the spread of the virus.
Fast forward to now, the industry is implementing new cleaning and disinfecting procedures to encourage good health for our families, friends, co-workers, students, and communities. It is well-known that having a clean and safe building can improve learning and performance.
Although we are in a post-pandemic world, exposure to other common viral outbreaks over time will be common. RSV, Flu, Norovirus, hMPXV (aka Monkeypox) were viruses that spread around the globe and impacted many people’s lives in 2022. Throughout the recent worldwide health events, our knowledge of cleaning products and techniques has grown, leading to higher expectations of what it means to have a “clean” building.
As a facility care manager, it’s critical that you meet these new expectations to keep spaces clean and safe to work, learn, and thrive in, and it is crucial to stay on top of these expectations.
A Renewed Commitment to Sustainability
The concept of sustainable development has existed for just shy of 50 years. Since then, the facility maintenance industry has established renewed efforts to better our planet.
Green building standards have evolved to reduce waste, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and meet new legislation1. Here are great places to start:
- Identify products with ecolabels and certifications accredited by organizations such as the U.S. Green Building Council2 (USGBC), Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design3 (LEED), and Fitwel4 have improved building maintenance policies and procedures.
- Minimize pollution with waste diversion strategies. Using waste and recycling collection systems, facility management can foster a healthier and more sustainable environment in an impactful way while staying on a budget.
- Assess your building’s environmental impact with “foot-printing”. A process that “measures overall corporate chemicals management performance by evaluating management strategies, chemical inventory, and public disclosure levels.”5
Attracting New Workers & Retaining Your Current Workforce
Throughout 2022, the labor market experienced its ups and downs, which has required employers to explore new ways to empower their current employees and to stand out amongst their competitors to engage new recruits. Companies have focused on the people behind the business to retain existing talent.
We’ve seen Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs implemented at businesses across the country. By including a DEI committee or having a simple DEI statement6, your business can clearly communicate to potential job candidates that you value your employees and celebrate the variety of backgrounds that contribute to your company’s success. In this article by the ISSA7, the organization provides a wealth of successful examples to demonstrate how celebrating and embracing diversity can strengthen a facility maintenance business.
In addition, you can provide your team with the tools, training, and education to complete tasks efficiently and boost their productivity and fulfillment at their jobs.
Are you looking to adapt to the new challenges in the cleaning industry? Contact Envoy Solutions, and our experts will help you identify the right products to meet evolving customer needs, enhance green building standards, and identify strategies to maintain a strong workforce.
1. EPA - Examples and resources for transforming waste streams in communities
2. U.S. Green Building Council News & Insights
3. U.S. Green Building Council - Guide to LEED Certification
4. Fitwel - Clarify with Fitwel for added value, risk mitigation, and ESG reporting
5. American Cleaning Institute - Goal: Increasing transparency
6. CleanLink - How to write a DEI statement for your cleaning business
7. ISSA - Strengthening your organization through diversity
