Stepping Up to the Plate

What role can the housekeeping or environmental services department play in addressing “big-picture” facilities management (FM)

challenges? Research tells us it can be a pretty significant one.

Understanding your department’s place in the overall facilities management scheme requires identifying the most common critical FM business-related issues:

1. The growing pressure to contribute to the bottom line, in spite of fewer dollars to work with.
2. Playing the outsourcing card: when to hold, when to fold.
3. Understanding and applying the concept of intra-department partnering.
4. Understanding and applying the concept of flex-staffing — a new way of doing more with less.

Housekeeping departments have an opportunity to fine-tune performance by recognizing how these business issues trickle down to impact individual facility missions. Similarly, housekeeping managers are more likely to be acknowledged as critical facility players if they are aware of what drives financial decisions ... and adapt game plans accordingly.

More bang for the buck
The mantra: “do more with less,” these days, echoes loud and clear within most housekeeping departments. In the Pittsburgh Public School District, for instance, the number of facilities employees has declined from 700 in the 1970s, to 385 today, reports Jafus (Jay) Boyd, Jr., director of plant operations.

Making sure personnel are trained in a variety of tasks is key to adapting, says Boyd.

Each summer, Boyd’s housekeeping employees spend a full week in training. The curriculum covers a wide range of maintenance and school-related issues. This year, for instance, classes are scheduled on the safe operation of snow removal equipment, crisis management and proper cleaning product disposal.

Another way to stretch shrinking budgets is to use online purchasing sites, says Erik Lekberg, director of operations at the Citicorp Center in Chicago, which is managed by Jones Lang La Salle IP, Inc. Lekberg estimates that he is able to save 10 percent to 15 percent on cleaning and maintenance supplies by purchasing online. Equally important, Lekberg receives just one monthly invoice for all those purchases.

“The purchasing administrative burden is mitigated extensively,” he says.

Harry Yarwood, responsible for housekeeping functions at the Brooklyn Public Library’s 59 different locations throughout the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y., credits a switch to chemical proportioning systems for helping cut the library system’s cleaning supply use in half. The system automatically mixes the correct proportions of chemicals and water, keeping employees from adding more chemicals than are needed.

Other dollar-saving initiatives also are adding up. Yarwood switched to roll towels in his restrooms because the previous C-fold towels tended to get lost or dropped on the floor. Plus, patrons seem to use less of the roll towels, which leads to less re-stocking and re-ordering, he says. Another savings came when Yarwood switched from single toilet-paper dispensers to triple dispensers, again reducing restocking needs.

Touting teamwork
Some departments within a facility may get away with operating in a vacuum, but not the housekeeping / environmental services mission. A big factor in developing a housekeeping strategy is the extent to which managers and front-line staffers are familiar with other goals in an organization. More important, how does the cleaning mission relate to the success or failure of other departments?

Leon Vidal, director of environmental services at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Petrie Campus in New York, says, “From the sidewalk to the admitting area, to pre-op, we’re the department that has contact with every other department.”

Vidal works closely with engineering and construction to coordinate project support that may come in the way of general cleanup afterward or a request for special housekeeping support during the design/construction project.

Communication is key to helping employees in different departments support one another, says Fernando Vizcarra, director of facilities at the LAC-USC Health Care Network in Los Angeles.

For instance, a nurse on one wing may need to have a bed stripped and re-made in order to accommodate a waiting patient. At the same time, the environmental services employees might be swamped in another part of the center.

“We try to get our people to maintain patience and be responsive, says Vizcarra. He reminds his staff that they only control one end of the conversation. However, a calm and patient response on their part often can defer a caller’s anger or irritation.

In addition, he makes a point of helping his employees understand priorities. For instance, surgical beds typically need to be cleaned “ASAP” in order to accommodate the next patient.

Don Warner, a seattle-based director of facilities and environmental health services for Honeywell, a $25-billion manufacturer based in Morristown, N.J., makes a point of either attending, or having one of his managers attend the weekly departmental staff meetings for the business units they support.

“We get to know what’s going on at the highest level,” he says. “It builds a bridge to those businesses.”

Of course, the reverse also is true: the actions of other departments affect housekeeping’s ability to do its job. James P. Johnson, director of University Housekeeping at Duke University in Durham, N.C., provides an example: During hard rains, water can come in window wells in some buildings if storm drains become clogged. Johnson, who oversees about 200 staff in more than 130 buildings, makes a point of talking with his counterpart in the maintenance department to make sure he is aware of how a lack of preventive maintenance can impact both departments.

“Maintenance and housekeeping have to meet to talk about things that help both departments meet their budgets,” says Johnson. “We need to look at the budget of the University as a whole.”

Exploring outside help
While the idea of working with contract cleaning firms often sparks concern in employees, who are likely to worry that their jobs are at stake, some organizations embrace outsourcing.

It makes sense for Honeywell to focus on its expertise in manufacturing, and work with other firms to handle tasks at which Warner’s staff are not experts. As a result, Honeywell outsources most of its housekeeping function, says Warner, who has retained an environmental health and safety staff of six, and a facilities staff of eleven.

Ralston Purina Co., a $3-billion producer of pet food, has been outsourcing its housekeeping functions for about seven years, says Dan Myer, group manager of facility support services in St. Louis.

Successful contract arrangements should provide both accountability and flexibility. For instance, Myer says he is able to request a replacement for an employee who isn’t working out.

At Honeywell, Warner can request its facilities outsourcing partner (Boston-based UNICCO) to find skilled people for temporary jobs. “It’s a matter of identifying what you need, and then they find someone,” says Warner.

Recently, the outsourcing firm provided a worker who will spend a couple of months drawing CADD diagrams of several buildings that are being upgraded. While the contract employee doesn’t provide maintenance or housekeeping work, he supports the facilities project team with space layouts and planning, he says.

Still, some organizations feel that their overall goals are best met by maintaining an internal housekeeping staff. In highly sensitive research areas, in-house staff can help keep company secrets or monitor the security of specific areas. In other locations, the in-house staff takes an “ownership” that managers have a hard time finding in contracted employees.

In the case of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., which can accommodate 100 patients, staff not only clean, but they also provide some sanity for guests, says Rebecca Wilson, supervisor, general services for the clinic.

Wilson points out that the Center’s 10 housekeeping employees often get to know many of the patients, who typically spend about one month at the Center. Unlike most of their discussions with medical personnel, patients are able to carry on regular conversations with housekeeping staff. Such interaction would be less likely to occur if the staff wasn’t made up of trusted, veteran employees.

In addition, it’s critical that all center employees respect the confidentiality of patients receiving care at the center — some of whom are well-known, says Wilson.

Even with housekeeping departments that don’t commit 100 percent to outsourcing, many are finding that more limited “out-tasking” arrangements can be a way to free up employees to concentrate on the jobs they do best.

Vidal at Beth Israel Medical Center uses outside companies to handle pest control, window cleaning, and the maintenance of wheelchairs, stretchers and the like.

“These are specialized, tedious and time-consuming (tasks),” says Vidal, making them perfect candidates for out-tasking.

Learning to be flexible
Often, housekeeping staff are asked to do more with less due to employee turnover or budget constraints. As a result, a number of housekeeping departments have changed how they deploy personnel. Several years ago, the Brooklyn Public Library system moved to a regional organizational structure. Previously, all housekeeping personnel would report to a single administration building to receive their assignment for the day, which could be at any one of the system’s 59 buildings. Now, the buildings are divided into four regions, and each mechanical and custodial employee works within one region. The benefit?

“There’s a greater sense of ownership. People feel their region belongs to them,” says Yarwood.

In order for flexible staffing to work, all employees need to be trained to do a variety of jobs, says Lance Severance, director of environmental services at Georgetown University Hospital.

The hospital, located in Washington D.C., has 600-plus beds and about 160 environmental services personnel. Rather than hiring specialists, it’s more cost-effective to improve employee salaries and provide staff with the training needed to handle a range of tasks, such as floor care, trash removal and patient discharges, says Severance.

“The days of having an individual trained to do one specific duty are a thing of the past,” he says.

Severance points out another benefit of multi-task training: employees are more likely to take their own jobs seriously when they see that management does the same. The perception: management is willing to invest time and money so that employees can stay abreast of trends in their field.

Clearly, today’s competitive and rapidly changing business environment presents challenges for all areas of organizations. However, inventive housekeeping and environmental services managers are finding new ways to deploy people and technology to meet these challenges.

“Housekeeping isn’t what it was 15 years ago,” says Duke’s Johnson. “It’s no longer the day of just the mop and bucket.”

Karen Kroll is a Minnetonka, Minn.-based writer who frequently covers the facilities industry.