Higher wages for cleaners
Most
office cleaning companies
and
cleaning companies have
to compete on price, but how do you get and keep good
cleaners without paying good wages, why do clients
always go for the lowest cost when it comes to cleaning?
Low pay, low standards? Why is cleaning so price driven?
Why is cleaning never seen as a professional job in its
own right with the usual associated pay and conditions?
Lots of whys right?
Cleaning is just a dead end
job that people who cant find other work or are in
between other jobs or due to some set of circumstances
do? Right? Well some would agree...
The following
is from a business forum -
Small business owners
getting rich from paying staff peanuts?? yeah right
Floor Sweeper £8.50 per hour Has it not occured to
you that if you pay the floor sweeper £8.50 per hour
then the warehouse staff for instance would want £10-12
per hour, the forklift truckdriver on £10 would then
want £15 per hour, the manager would then want upwards
of £35k!
To employe your floor sweeper a small
shop for instance would be shelling out around £21k a
year if you include employers NI
There is a
valid argument here and ties in with skilled workers vs
non skilled workers and their corresponding pay. However
one could argue that cleaners would indeed be more
skilled and the industry more professional if they were
paid higher wages.
The argument of comparing non
skilled workers vs skilled workers may have some
validity with comparing a surgeon with a truck driver
but does the same hold true when comparing a cleaner
with a forklift driver?
Why is cleaning seen as
purely a non skilled sector and a dead end job. For many
people it suits them ideally, particularly if its part
time job which they can fit round other parts of their
life, such as childcare, education other work
commitments etc.
If clients were willing to pay
higher rates (and in my opinion this is the crucial
factor) then cleaners could be sent on more courses -
yes professional cleaning is more than just pushing a
vacuum cleaner around, standards and keeping and
recruiting good professional cleaning staff would be
much easier.
Clients demand a professional
service but wish to pay extremely low prices which makes
it impossible to pay professional pay which means
cleaning will never be a profession, and so it goes, and
so it goes.
This is an interesting area that we
as cleaning companies cannot delve too deeply into, do
you want the work or not will be the client’s response,
then do it at the lowest price.
Clients want
their premises cleaned to the highest standards, a job
they are not usually prepared to do themselves, they
also want someone reliable, trustworthy, professional,
conscientious but then are only prepared to pay way less
than what they would ever consider working for, herein
lies the contradiction.
Professional rates means
you can have professionals
See what out clients have
to say about us in out office cleaning testimonial page
"we chose ICS because we liked
their green cleaning
ethos plus we were very impressed with their
price"
Julie Kelly - Sony TV
more testimonials
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