Push ‘Cleaner business, better profits,’ says JohnsonDiversey
August 31st 2005 The cleaning industry must combat staff turnover and sell the benefits of cleaner premesis, according to JohnsonDiversey, MD Nick Snow.
Snow says although contract cleaning companies – in the face of price pressure from their own customers – understand the benefits of reduced whole life costs as opposed to lowest purchase price, the industry’s high staff turnover was eating into the savings. “To get the best out of new technology greater training is usually required,” he says. “Because staff turnover is so high, these efficiencies are often squandered.”
Snow says staff retantion will only be solved by better wages. One way of achieving this, he says is by changing customer’s perception of cleaning from a ‘necessary evil’ to a means of increasing revenue. While major companies such as McDonalds are now looking at hygiene as a means of customer retention and growth, Snow says much work remains to change attitudes across the board.
“We have to get people to equate cleanliness and hygiene with commercial value,” he states. “Just one case of food poisoing can ruin the reputation of a restaurant.” (Snow’s statement is backed up by a recent MORI poll commissioned by Kimberly Clark into the UK’s concerns of restaurant hygiene) “There are signs that some big players are looking at hygiene as a method of gaining competitive advantage, but on the whole it is treated in a rather lax manner.”
To read Cleaning Matters' full length exclusive interview with Nick Snow, see the current (September) print edition issue, or click here to read it online. More articles from JohnsonDiversey Equipment Ltd: | 
