RETAIL & DAYTIME CLEANING Undercover Boss
With more than twenty six years of cleaning and FM experience, Principle Cleaning Services Ltd remains one of the few independently owned companies in the industry.
The company was formed in 1989 by the Chief Executive, Doug Cooke – who is also the Chairman of the British Cleaning Council and Director at the Cleaning & Support Services Association. With more than 42 years industry experience, Doug has grown Principle Cleaning into a sustainable and award winning contract cleaner, with an impressive portfolio of prestigious customers across Central London, including a number of iconic and well renowned buildings. Incorporating Principle Window Cleaning into its portfolio in 2013, Principle Cleaning now has 16,000 employees and a turnover of £25million.
After a senior member of staff had mentioned seeing the show to Doug, he decided to take to the streets of London in disguise to reenact the popular Channel 4 TV programme ‘Undercover Boss'. The programme portrays executives taking extraordinary steps to ensure their companies are thriving by going undercover in their own businesses.
His undercover mission was to examine the inner workings
of Principle Cleaning, with the aim of the experiment to primarily meet the staff, find out what they thought of their work and of the company, and to examine what type of quality service the client was receiving, as well as to see how dedicated staff managed their workload and to find out if he could improve or help in any way in the future.
After growing a beard, donning a baseball cap and suiting up in a company uniform, Doug transformed himself into a night cleaner ready to work an eight hour shift, which began with a journey on the tube at 7.30pm. With the permission of two high profile clients, one a financial institution and the other a prestigious media organisation, he crafted himself a cunning alter ego as a mature student from Sweden called David,
Principle Cleaning Services Chief Executive Doug Cooke went undercover in an attempt to find out more about his company’s night time cleaning workforce, and whether a switch to daytime cleaning was needed. Here, they reveal all about his top secret mission.
who needed to earn money to fund an engineering course.
Throughout the shift, he carried out normal office cleaning duties such as emptying bins and cleaning and wiping down more than 500 desks, working within a team of six other operatives.
Doug had total backing from the clients involved, who were impressed that a cleaning company and particularly the Chief Executive was doing something like this, as it had never been done before within the industry.
Speaking of the experience, Doug said: “Overall, I was overwhelmed to see for myself what a talented and dedicated team of staff work at Principle Cleaning. I was very pleasantly surprised that the cleaning supervisors and their teams were so cheerful and
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