'Teaming' With Controversy

Team cleaning can be an effective way of cutting costs and improving performance. It also can be a political hot potato for the unsuspecting advocate

Team cleaning, one popular housekeeping strategy, is considered one of the more efficient and cost-effective cleaning strategies for all types of facilities. It is safe to say that team cleaning is the darling of concepts being applied in cleaning circles these days. Similarly, team cleaning proponents include frontline workers, housekeeping management and industry consultants.

But there are two sides to the team-cleaning story. Critics have made national headlines, quoting unions, building occupants and custodians who claim team cleaning is “cruel,” “demeaning” and “dehumanizing” to cleaning workers. In November 2002, for example, a local union put a stop to team cleaning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). But the university’s physical plant department and some university administrators contend that team cleaning is safe, more efficient and more thorough than traditional zone cleaning.

What’s the difference?
With team cleaning, each custodian is assigned a specific task or group of tasks to perform throughout an entire building. For example, a “restroom specialist” is responsible for cleaning the building’s restrooms. Another worker, the “vacuum specialist,” is responsible for vacuuming, and so on.

Zone cleaning assigns each custodian a specific area in a building to clean. That custodian is responsible for everything — cleaning the restrooms, vacuuming, mopping, dusting and more — in his or her zone.

Standardizing operations
Team-cleaning advocates contend they like that the system reduces the number of cleaning chemicals and pieces of equipment needed to clean a facility.

Jim Rush, department manager of site operations at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., says that team cleaning standardized his equipment and chemical inventory.

“Team cleaning reduced the amount of equipment needed,” Rush says. “With zone cleaning, everyone and their brother and sister had their own vacuum cleaner, mop bucket and so on. We went with what was best and the most efficient, and eliminated the rest.”

Rush’s vacuum specialists all use the same backpack vacuum models. He also cut the number of chemicals the department uses down from 125 to fewer than 12.

The team-cleaning approach also is effective in matching the most competent cleaners with a particular cleaning task.

“You have highs and lows in quality throughout the building,” says Bruce Stark, manager of building services at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He notes that some custodians might be good at one task but not so good at another.

“Team cleaning made a lot of sense to me because I am able to assign people based on their skill level,” Stark says.

Managers of team cleaners have the system down to a science.

Before the University of Texas at Austin implemented their team-cleaning strategy in 1995 and again in 2000, Associate Director of Physical Plant Support Services Jim Alty learned exactly how long it should take each specialist to complete tasks. Alty developed a time standards for workers to adhere to so they would complete their work within a certain amount of time.

An added dividend: Supervisors can then keep better track of where each worker should be at a certain time of the shift.

“With zone cleaning, it might take an hour to find a person in a building,” Stark says. “It is hard to know where they’re supposed to be [and] when.”

Stark says it is easy for supervisors accustomed to zone cleaning to adopt a philosophy that what they don’t see they don’t have to do anything about. The zone cleaners often disregard their supervisors because the former have gotten away with their own way of cleaning for so long.

Stark’s team-cleaning system requires supervisors to be in the buildings with the custodians.

“They need to be out there, walking the beat, praising them, seeing who needs more training,” he says.

Proponents of zone cleaning contend that custodians take ownership of their assigned areas, which can be empowering to custodians. The downside, however, is that custodians can become too attached to an area and efficiency and productivity can be compromised. Similarly, zone cleaners may be less willing to stand in for a fellow cleaner in another part of the facility.

Thus, team cleaning may allow for smoother transitions for customers and staff when one person on the team is out sick or quits.

One size fits ... some
While many facility management professionals think team cleaning is the best cleaning strategy for their organization, some of their peers disagree.

“Team cleaning is not the end all and be all,” says Jerry Husman, director of facilities management at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, Iowa. “It has its ups and downs.”

Husman, who joined the medical center in November 2002, says team cleaning is successful in some areas, like offices, but not the best way to clean patient areas.

“It’s a challenge to help patients understand the team-cleaning concept,” Husman says. “They might see three people enter their rooms to clean the restroom or empty the trash. Or they might only have their trash pulled. The public still is expecting to see the traditional maid service that you might see in a hotel.”

Patients fill out satisfaction surveys at the end of their stay and some report that they were in the room for three days and only had their trash emptied.

“It can’t be 100 percent clean for the entire stay [with team cleaning],” Husman says.

“In office areas and support areas, team cleaning can work very well,” Husman says. “We might come up with a hybrid system. My goal is to come up with a work plan that everyone embraces.”

Stark agrees.

“The things that hurt the team-cleaning drive is the idea that it’s all or nothing,” Stark says. “[Organizations] need to develop campaigns and programs from within.”

Tough transitions
Overall, managers say their customers are happy with the results of team cleaning, but the switch to the team system was not an easy process.

Often, the first attempt to clean using teams ends up being questioned by unions, staff or administrators. UWM took its first (and perhaps its last) shot at team cleaning in June 2002 as an attempt to clean more efficiently in spite of reduced budgets and hiring freezes.

The UWM physical plant department chose one building to host a pilot program for six months. The department announced to the custodians involved that the university was going to start a pilot and gave the custodians the option to not be involved by cleaning another area during the pilot.

The local union opposed the program and petitioned university administrators to investigate the pros and cons.

“We met with the union leadership about their health and safety concerns,” says Sona Andrews, associate vice chancellor of campus climate.

The university conducted an independent ergonomic assessment of the use of backpack vacuums, for example.

“The union opposed the assessment,” Andrews says, “and it revealed that there were no differences in health and safety between zone and team cleaning.”

So UWM went ahead with the pilot program. UWM officials surveyed building occupants who said they were satisfied with the program, and pointed out that areas “were attended to more quickly,” Andrews says.

Union opposition continued to heat up on campus. At one point, students, faculty and staff joined union workers in a protest outside the UWM campus union.

In November 2002, just one month before the scheduled end of the pilot, the university’s administrators put a stop to team cleaning. Administrators were not happy with the battle that team cleaning had created between faculty and staff. The campus is working together with the union to come up with a cleaning strategy on which most of the university staff can agree.

“There was a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding out there,” says Rick Kazmierski, superintendent of UWM buildings and grounds. “Team cleaning — from my perspective — was a total success, even with the resistance from some employees.”

The local union refused to comment on the university’s pilot program.

Making it work
Managers agree on one thing: The implications of implementing new cleaning routines go well beyond the methodology itself.

“We had a very similar reaction [as UWM],” Alty says. “There was a huge cry to kill the program. The student newspaper was running articles against [team cleaning], the staff and faculty did not want anything to change, and the custodians pushed the idea that it was bad.”

That was in 1995. Alty still is addressing the ramifications of team cleaning at the University of Texas.

“There was a point in time where we thought about cancelling the whole thing,” he says. “But we re-evaluated the situation and took a look at all the mistakes.”

In 2000, the university re-implemented a version of team cleaning under a new name — Operating System 1 (OS1), a system developed by industry consultant John Walker.

“We’re on the eighth building and we have about 60 or 80 to go,” Alty says. “We’re doing it very methodically and carefully.” The transition will be complete by 2005.

Tell it like it is
Alty’s secret to success is communication.

His department created a Web site on the pilot program, created marketing pieces with the benefits of team cleaning, and held public forums.

“Honesty is the best approach,” he says.

Stark says his department at the University of Colorado put a halt to team cleaning after three months. After his director wrote a letter to the campus at large explaining team cleaning and its benefits, the university re-implemented the program.

“It stopped the resistance,” Stark says. “[The resistance] kept going down and down. Turnover went down and down again.”

He says managers and administrators need to be crystal clear about the reasons why the organization is adopting team cleaning. He believes the university was closer to accepting the program once his director sent out the letter.

“UWM has to build up that trust,” Stark says. “It’s all about leadership.”

This is Rush’s fourth year of team cleaning. He says the system is saving his job.

“Team cleaning is helping keep the wolf away from the door,” he says. “It wouldn’t take much to be outsourced.”

Even after four years, Rush says he still faces the challenge of working with employees who do not like team cleaning.

“You have to have a thick skin to pull it off.”