Cleaning and hygiene sector makes good progress on key issues

OVER recent months, we’ve seen the cleaning and hygiene sector make significant progress in a number of areas. The BCC and its members are constantly driving to highlight the vital and important role of the sector and staff.

Our recently released research report for 2022 again reinforced our message about the true scale and importance of the cleaning, hygiene and waste sectors to the UK economy. Latest figures show that 1.47 million people are employed in the industryapproximately 5% of the UK workforce - ensuring it remains one of the country’s top 10 biggest employers. According to the latest information available, it contributed £58.9 billion to the UK economy in 2019, up from the previous year. All subsectors, bar landscape service activities, saw a year-on-year growth in turnover up to 2021.

It is difficult to draw conclusions about the impact of the pandemic and staff shortages on the health of the industry today as the data is not completely up to date. Nevertheless, the figures clearly demonstrate why our calls for the voice of the industry to be recognised should be listened to.

Our sector is massively important to the economic health of the nation.

This message about the economic clout of the sector is one of the key messages in our recently launched ‘We Clean, We Care’ campaign. At the Manchester Cleaning Show earlier this year, we launched ‘We Clean, We Care’ by offering free badges emblazoned with the logo to attendees. The campaign highlights how the role of cleaning and hygiene personnel is frontline and essential to keeping key workers and the public healthy, safe and well and that sector staff are skilled, professional and trained to a high standard. Over the next few months, it will also reiterate another key message about how our industry has been a key component and absolutely vital in the fight against the COVID pandemic and will continue to be essential in returning to normality safely and hygienically, as well as helping to stop any future pandemic.

The ‘We Clean, We Care’ badges we first dished out at the Manchester show have proved to be hugely popular, with orders for several thousand more badges coming in from

BCC members. The logo can be downloaded for free from the BCC website and we hope the industry will adopt it in the future.

The launch of the ‘We Clean, We Care’ campaign is only one of recent developments that are very promising for the future of the sector. We’ve seen BCC member the Worshipful Company of Environmental Cleaners (WCEC) launch its Chartered Practioners Register, which will help highlight the expertise of sector staff. Another member, the Cleaning and Support Services Association (CSSA), launched Clean Start, which aims to encourage people outside the industry to consider a career within cleaning. We are also hoping for good news on the bid for the Cleaning Hygiene Operative Apprenticeship in the autumn, though it is still too early to say for sure. If it gets the green light, the training programme and apprenticeship will ensure significant amounts of funding currently lost to the cleaning and hygiene industry can instead be invested in training for personnel. It will also improve recognition for the skills that sector staff have which, as I said earlier, is one of the BCC’s key aims.

It is wonderful to see such good progress on these key sector issues. You can find out more about ‘We Clean, We Care’ and our latest research report at:

WWW.BRITISHCLEANINGCOUNCIL.ORG

ESG - worth doing for the right reasons

I mentioned a while ago that ESG is an area of business which we, as cleaning contractors, can no longer label as ‘nice to do when we can get round to it’. No doubt like many other contractors, we have been drafting our own ESG strategy - christened at DOC as ‘Beyond Cleaning’ - and are planning to launch it later this month. What struck me, however, as we pulled together the various strands of this three-year plan, is that most of the activities we are now framing as ESG are things we’ve actually been doing for nigh on 20 years. I’m talking about employing local people, running an ethnically diverse and gender equal workforce, trying to improve pay rates, appointing local suppliers and subcontractors, using power-efficient equipment, purchasing eco-friendly products, and supporting charities.

We’re not the only ones. I can scarcely think of a competitor who has not operated in this way for a long time. So it begs the question, why are all these worthy practices now appearing under the new banner of ESG? I think the answer is really quite simple. Whilst some may think of it as an agenda overly focused on social justice, the considerate management of stakeholders in a way that is sustainable and inclusive for them all is fast becoming a beacon of hope in a world characterised at times by some pretty awful behaviour and what many see as a worrying decline in moral standards. Let’s just stop for a moment, therefore, and congratulate ourselves as an industry that, without necessarily realising it, we have been running our companies in a socially responsible manner that the world’s governments and corporates, not to mention major players in the not-for-profit sector, are now saying is essential in order to maintain credibility amongst stakeholders of all types, whether they be employees, customers, suppliers, or investors. You might also ask, what is the difference between the CSR policies of 20 years ago and the ESG policies of 2022? The answer is surely that the underlying crises they are trying to solve are all of a sudden more real and in some cases looking increasingly irreversible. Which is why the difference between the demands of those who promote ESG today and those who used to extol CSR is that whereas before it was enough just to

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be attempting the remedies, it is now necessary to demonstrate by way of record keeping and verifiable metrics that you are actually delivering on the remedies and achieving your ESG objectives year-on-year. In our industry that could mean reducing C02 emissions, paying the Real Living Wage, switching to probiotic cleaning products, or whatever channels you are pursuing to operate responsibly.

I still stand by my comments of a few months ago that there needs to be a balance struck between the pursuit of ESG perfection and the reality of the corporate and social world we face every day. But if you ask me what the benefits of ESG are and whether it is worth delivering, I’d say it is now not only a moral decision, but a long-term decision about commercial survival. Attracting the right people to work for you and nurturing talent is now very much about the values you hold as an employer and about walking that talk. If these things help you make it onto tender lists, that is a welcome side effect, but it is no longer the main reason for doing it.

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