Strapped

Under pressure to contain or cut costs, corporate decision makers often turn to building operations for places to save money. But when housekeeping budgets shrink, managers are left with less money for chemicals, tools, equipment and custodial manpower — everything they need to be a successful cleaning operation.

To deal with resource shortages, managers often have to revisit their departments’ service standards and come up with creative ways to achieve the biggest bang from the dollars they do have to work with. Successful housekeeping managers know their buildings inside and out, can present the facts of any cleaning equation to organization administration and proactively work to improve productivity before cuts occur.

Cutting services
Many organizations are allowing staff numbers to drop by keeping vacant positions open or by completely cutting vacant positions once employees retire or quit. With fewer workers on staff to clean buildings, managers cut back cleaning in certain areas. However, managers cannot compromise health and safety requirements and are, thus, limited in how much cleaning they can cut.

Tasks should be ranked in order of how critical they are to the mission. In one university, for example, restrooms and sanitary areas, such as showers and locker rooms, come first. Public areas, such as hallways and classrooms, are the next priority. Departmental and chair offices are next, followed by personal faculty offices.

“We’ll always keep up restrooms and areas everyone traverses,” says Michael Smith, custodial supervisor at Western Washington University in Bellingham. “The behind-closed-doors areas are the last priority.”

Managers reminisce about how — once upon a time — faculty offices were cleaned daily. Now, custodians in many organizations are only cleaning offices once or twice a week.

Colorado State University custodial staff vacuums offices and empties office recyclables once a week, says Jeffrey Wooldridge, assistant facilities manager at the university in Fort Collins. Staff empties office trash twice a week. Custodians may enter any given office up to four times per week.

“If we drop 10 percent, we will cut services 10 percent,” Wooldridge says. “Right now, we’re proposing to save $100,000 by going into private offices once a week — period — to perform all the tasks in one pass.”

Health-care facilities have more than just restrooms to worry about when it comes to sanitation and hygiene.

“In operating rooms and intensive-care units, you just cannot reduce your level of service,” says Ebenezer Tolman, environmental services department area leader for Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, N.H.

The Cheshire staff implemented a “Five-Star” system, which identifies locations besides patient areas that must be kept at a high standard, such as lobbies. Tolman says if someone calls in sick, he will pull a housekeeper off of a non-critical area, such as business offices, and put that person on staff to clean high-priority areas.

It is critical that high-traffic, patient and restroom areas are fully staffed and fully addressed, he says. As a result, other areas might not look as clean as managers would like them to.

“You can tell where we’ve cut down,” says John Woods, director of facilities services at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan. Research areas, hallways and stairways are cleaned less often, and custodians are dust mopping classrooms less frequently, only picking up big material like cups and newspapers regularly.

Evaluate staff
Because of the significance of labor costs, review staffing assignments, shifts and distribution of labor often to guarantee cost-effective use of valuable resources.

Save overtime pay for emergency situations.

“Always look at the schedule,” says Alice Price, director of support services at Methodist Medical Center in Peoria, Ill. “Don’t look to reduce, but reallocate labor.”

She says it is important to figure out if workload is distributed realistically.

Managers should not think that taking on more cleaning responsibility means adding more staff. Price says managers have to learn how to keep employees motivated so that they are willing to entertain increased workload when it occurs.

“Work will come from within,” Price says. “You have to raise the bar. People will rise to your expectations.”

Her staff recently took on more cleaning-area responsibility, including the hospital’s main kitchen.

A good place to start in preparing your increased workload contingency plan is to regularly schedule shift “walk-throughs” in order to monitor staff performance. Regular monitoring will help determine if workloads are appropriate.

Woods implemented some organizational changes early this year in order to better respond to customer concerns.

“It is sometimes difficult to take customer calls and tell them what task was done at what shift and who did it,” Woods says. It turns out it was best to divide tasks and make them specific to each shift — noisy tasks and classroom tasks are performed at night and quieter, less intrusive cleaning is performed during the day.

Tough love
Make sure you have a documented set of policies that address such issues as sick days and vacation, as well as issuing standards of performance to all employees.

Look at trends in worker absenteeism and hold employees more accountable for missing work without legitimate reasons. Apply the policies already in place.

“With three shifts of workers, there will be disparities of how discipline is applied,” Solomon says. “If an employee works part time or a variety of shifts, they might be held to a standard on one shift, but not another.”

He suggests managers monitor employees more closely, counsel them for absenteeism and reward those with perfect attendance.

Get more done with less
Equip housekeeping staff with the right tools and equipment to boost productivity levels.

“Look at automation, like the rider sweeper or riding scrubber,” says Steve Spencer, cleaning and interior maintenance senior specialist for State Farm Insurance. “Invest in equipment that can cover 50,000 square feet per hour. Walk-behinds and mopping get you only 10,000 to 12,000 square feet per hour.”

Use your knowledge of facility needs and cleaning costs to make your case for more efficient tools and equipment.

“Go to the boss and say, ‘I have three people retiring next year. Can I buy this piece of equipment and not hire new people?’ ” Spencer says.

Three years ago, Price approached the Methodist Medical Center administration and suggested that a riding scrubber and burnisher would help improve productivity and cut labor costs.

She says her vice president approved the purchase order, but was not confident that the equipment was essential. But now that the housekeeping department is using the equipment, Price says, “You clearly can see that it is the most important piece of equipment we have because you can tell [by looking around the building] when it’s down.”

She says two people can dust mop, scrub and finish all of the floors in the eight-floor hospital in one night. Using traditional mopping or walk-behind equipment, the staff had time to clean only three floors per shift.

Managers need to explain that while new equipment is expensive, certain purchases can pay off in productivity gains and labor cost reductions.

“Take the upright versus a wide-area vacuum, or a battery-powered versus a cord scrubber,” Solomon says. “The battery-powered machine is going to save time and labor because you’ll be able to continue down the pathway of the corridor.”

This saves time because your crew won’t have to unplug a machine, search for a free outlet, then plug the equipment in again, while also struggling with cords that easily get tangled in knots or caught on objects.

Managers should monitor the quantity and frequency of chemical use, as well. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that studies show that using disinfectant solution on hospital patient-room floors offers no significant advantage over regular detergent and water cleaning, and has little or no impact on the occurrence of health care associated infections.
“Most hospitals routinely use germicide [disinfectant], but it’s not necessary,” Solomon says. “If you can cut down on the use of germicides, you save money. And if you use microfiber mops, you use less germicide.”

Microfiber mops are cloth-thin and negatively charged, attracting dirt. A housekeeper cleaning patient-room floors can roll up and pile about 20 mops on top of a cleaning cart, change the mops when needed, then hang the dirty ones on their cart.

“With traditional mops, you have to change the mop and solution every two to three rooms,” Solomon says. “The mops are big and bulky and you have to bend and squeeze the mop with a wringer. The traditional way requires more chemicals, more water, more mops and more time.”

Other productivity-boosting strategies: researching the new generation of floor surfaces that resist soiling and floor coatings that last longer. Surface types such as ceramic or rubber floors only have to be scrubbed, swept and mopped. No stripping, waxing or buffing is required.

Spencer has three questions he says managers should ask themselves before implementing new products or ideas:

• Will [the new idea or product] reduce the life of the finish or surface?
  
  
• Will [it] cause a health hazard?
  
  
• Will [it] cause a safety hazard?
  

Be a numbers maven
Managers also have to come up with ways to clean “smarter.” Oftentimes, if a manager is familiar with certain cleaning benchmarks, streamlining procedures and increasing productivity comes that much easier.

“Know the square footage of areas, the number of cleanable square feet, the number of hard surfaces,” says Carl Solomon, senior maintenance and operations consultant with national facilities services at Kaiser Permanente hospitals.

There are formulas and software available that provide answers such as:

• total square feet by floor type
  
• total labor costs
  
• cost of cleaning chemicals
  
• cost to clean buildings per square foot
  
• number of required cleaning hours per full-time employee (FTE)
  
• number of hours each FTE spends cleaning
  

“You have to know how to talk dollars and cents,” Spencer says.

Housekeeping executives should know the ins and outs of their facilities before budgets are slashed, but it is especially important to have the information around belt-tightening times.

“This is the time for managers to introduce new ideas because people will look at anything that will save money,” Spencer says.

Making the most of the resources you have requires taking a look at every aspect of your cleaning operations. Then, be dedicated to being a leader in implementing changes and continuing to reassess operations regularly.

Keep up the good work
“Be proactive,” Spencer says. “Look at this stuff before budget cuts occur.” That way, when the budgets loosen up, managers will not need to hire the staff previously cut, and the money might be used for new equipment or staffing for other projects.

“The whole thing hinges on your ability to do ‘modeling,’ ” Wooldridge says. “Run scenarios. Ask what-if questions like ‘what if I change this equipment? What if I change the consumption of materials here?’ You should be modeling all the time.”

In reality, once budgets are cut, those dollars rarely flow back into the cleaning operation just because the economy improves or your organization’s business picks up. The pragmatic housekeeper knows that many of the cleaning management strategies triggered by budget cuts and hard economic times really make sense — period — regardless of the budget you have to work with. Oftentimes, the good managers and bad managers are separated by how proactive, versus reactive, they are in running their departments.