A WELCOME NUDGE
Paul Mulready, Marketing Manager of Northwood Hygiene Products Ltd looks into how to encourage washroom users to clean up their act.
Richard Thaler of the University Of Chicago has won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Economics for his work in behavioural economics, specifically something he has called the Nudge Theory. It’s quite complex and wide ranging, and it may include washrooms.
Essentially it ’nudges’ people into making the decisions that are best for them, rather than assuming that people should be left to make their own choices.
It may then explain, at least in part, why Northwood has seen marked improvements in the tidiness and overall cleanliness in most of the washrooms they have fitted out with their Leonardo Dispensing Systems.
Professor Thaler’s key requirement is that to get people to do what is best for them is to make things easy. So clearly, if nobody uses a washroom, cleaning it becomes simple. It is only when used that maintenance becomes a significant issue. So the less mess people make when using the facility, the easier it is to maintain.
The benefit to the user in making less mess is that the facility is nicer to use and, as we all know, most people
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prefer to use clean and hygienic washrooms. They may take exception if they are not.
So asking the users to respect the facilities, even for their own benefit and that of their colleagues, can be quite a task. A task that people may or may not take issue with, and which past experience suggests will almost certainly have little effect. But if users don’t realise that it’s a task, and that leaving the washroom tidy is easier than not, then those users are being ‘nudged’ into behaviours that benefit them.
Dispensers that look good set a tone and generate a positive reaction amongst users. Being able to keep them clean and hygienic comes from a sound intrinsic design which enables maintenance operatives to monitor them quickly and easily and to remedy any failings promptly, reducing any perception of falling standards.
Single sheet presentation doesn’t just reduce wastage, it also curbs the opportunity to end up with armfuls of tissue that could be strewn all over the place and take up disproportionate amounts of expensive cleaning time. So the nudging into more responsible
behaviours not only benefits the users themselves, it benefits the washroom management team too.
Washrooms refitted with Northwood’s Leonardo dispensing systems have been found to have been left tidier than previously was the case.
It seems to work across the board too. In schools such as leading independent St. Albans High School for Girls, to Sawtry Junior school; from Domino’s Pizza outlets to the Eagle House Hotel; and from Oxford’s Kassam Stadium to the two hotels in the same complex.
Of course they have to be maintained so that they continue to be found both tidy and clean, and making this possible with as little input as possible is a key contributor to overall cost in use performance. There is evidence that cleaning staff are being given ever increased targets to compensate for increased wages and anything that helps that increased productivity is bound to help.
Encouraging users to leave the facility as clean as they found it is a great start.
Nudge nudge!
www.northwood.co.uk
twitter.com/TomoCleaning
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