The New Cleaning Industry
As we enter a new era, it’s important to analyze your role and reevaluate your cleaning strategy.
COVID-19 has changed everything in the facilities industry: How we manage facilities, how we clean facilities, how we support our clients when their facilities are empty due to the pandemic, and how we are currently supporting our clients as their employees start to return to their offices. And of course, each COVID-19 variant changes or resets the path back to BAU (business as usual). How we clean and disinfect our buildings and workspaces continues to be a concern for employees and facility executives two years after the pandemic first began.
WHAT WE KNOW
We have seen the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) provide recommendations and requirements to help us return to BAU.
At Solid Rock Facility Management Company Limited, we are getting regular information updates on how COVID-19 spreads, and we also are getting updates from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on approved disinfectant registration (List N). All these agencies are supporting what we clean and disinfect, how we clean and disinfect, and when we should clean and disinfect, as well as recommendations and requirements for employee safety when providing these cleaning and disinfection services.
WHAT IS CHANGING
So, what is the BAU for facility service for the future? At Solid Rock, we believe that the facilities we manage and the clients we serve today are rapidly changing the look, feel, features, and amenities in their spaces to draw in new talent and keep existing talent in place. We also believe that the new office space will be different in design: More open, more inviting, and more creative.
In the post-pandemic era, companies have implemented new technology to support the health and safety of workers. As an example, touchless QR codes enable employees to share information without sharing documents.
The office is and will always be the heartbeat of every organization, but it no longer needs to be a place where every employee must come every day to be able to work.
So how do we, in the facility services industry, support our clients and their employees?
We have seen that working from home is as productive as working from the office. So, turning the office of the future into a creativity zone to generate ideas, collaborate, and find inspiration is what the future office will need to become.
SO, HOW DO WE HELP?
What is the role of the facility service provider? The new normal is that cleanliness and hygiene are going to be key to employees feeling safe in the built environments where they work, shop, dine, and socialize, and an enhanced focus on air quality, health screenings, cleaning protocols, and more are no longer optional.
The facility services industry must embrace the technology that is available today—self-cleaning surfaces, robotics, touchless consumable dispensers, and contactless technology, and be vigilant about what is on the horizon that can improve or enhance facility services delivery. In this competitive industry with rapidly increasing wages, labor shortages, an aging workforce, difficulty attracting young talent, and clients needing to find ways to reduce costs or control cost increases, we must be looking for the next innovation or technology that will help us be disruptive in the facilities services industry.
At Solid Rock, we are behind your business success
