CLEANING
PEOPLE, COMMUNITY, ENVIRONMENT
Simon Wrenn, MD of Kindred FM, explains how social value is an increasingly important feature of delivering cleaning services in the education sector.
Covid-19 and its ramifications have had a major effect on school cleaning. With concerns over children missing school, not to mention the importance of keeping teachers healthy, the value of cleaning in supporting the education sector has been highlighted to a degree unimaginable pre- pandemic. Schools demanded a highly flexible response from cleaning contractors, combining a forensic approach to the cleaning of vulnerable areas with an ability to react with lightning speed to urgent requests for sanitisation - all whilst maintaining ‘normal’ service in the background.
As a national contractor with close to two hundred school contracts and over 1700 staff, lockdown signified a period of intense activity here at Kindred, particularly because of the large number of schools that stayed open for keyworkers. The company invested heavily in staff welfare, quadrupling expenditure on PPE, collating all health conditions and directing staff aged 70 and over to shield on full pay. No member of staff on school contracts was furloughed, nor any management. WhatsApp groups were set up for every school in order to cascade information to the front line. The net result was a sense of togetherness and of all parties pulling in the same direction.
Some will say that companies across all UK industry sectors responded in whatever way was necessary to address the challenges of the pandemic. The difference for cleaning contractors is that it was not an option for us to shut up shop, furlough staff and wait until it all blew over. We were in the eye of the storm, delivering our service in full, whilst at the same time managing the health and safety of our staff who were highly exposed to the risk of infection.
36 | TOMORROW’S FM
Customer relationships are key What the last two years have shown us at Kindred is that the key measure of success in educational cleaning is the quality of the customer partnership and the importance of communication at every level of a contract, whether that’s between ourselves and our school, or between ourselves and our front-line teams.
The pandemic threw up what seemed like endless challenges, but by developing bespoke solutions for all our schools, and by staying in close contact with our school business managers, we managed to weather the storm and come out the other side with every contract intact. We found that what customers wanted was a no-nonsense, straight-talking approach where they put their trust in the solutions we delivered.
Adding social value to the mix This experience has set the agenda for the company going forward and our strategy is now focused squarely on partnership, supported by a commitment to social value and sustainability. Under the three banners of People, Community and Environment, a comprehensive series of initiatives is in place, each of which offers benefits that are distinctly mutual, with an emphasis on working in partnership to create sustainable contracts that will reward both Kindred and its customers in the long term.
People From their physical and mental wellbeing to their training and development we, like every other contractor, want to ensure our staff are happy, healthy and motivated.
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