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Human resource challenges
20th of October 2025 Article by Christian Bouzols
Two French cleaning federations and a HR specialist have conducted a survey to assess current HR practices and identify areas for improvement. Christian Bouzols reports for ECJ.
In a labour-intensive sector such as cleaning, where employees are the primary resource for companies, human resources management plays a strategic role.
With more than 600,000 employees in France, cleaning is a dynamic sector, but one marked by high turnover, a significant proportion of unskilled workers, and a large presence of women and
foreign workers. Although 80 per cent of jobs are permanent contracts, around 550,000 new hires are made each year, reflecting the constant need for recruitment, particularly for short-term contracts.
Optimising processes
In this context, the Île-de-France Federation of Cleaning Companies, the Centre Sud-Ouest Federation of Cleaning Companies and Coffreo, a company specialising in digital human resources solutions, conducted a survey of more than 100 human resources decision-makers in the sector. The aim of this study was to assess current HR practices and identify areas for improvement for cleaning companies.
Recruitment and optimising HR processes are the two main challenges identified by respondents, highlighting the key concerns of companies in the sector: successfully attracting new talent in a competitive environment (62 per cent of respondents) and making HR processes more efficient (55
per cent).
Furthermore, more than half of respondents feel that HR teams spend too much time on administrative tasks: 26 per cent believe they spend too much time on administration and 27 per cent say they have difficulty balancing this with their other duties. Issues related to administrative workload are also much more prevalent in companies with more than 50 employees.
In fact, 63 per cent feel pressure related to administrative management, compared to 35 per cent in smaller organisations. It should be noted that the absenteeism rate observed is higher than that of the rest of the private sector (which is 4.8 per cent). Thus, 56 per cent report a rate higher than five per cent, and 23 per cent higher than 10 per cent. This difference can be explained in particular by sometimes difficult working conditions and atypical working hours.
The HR workload can also be explained by the use of short-term contracts: 26 per cent of respondents have between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of their staff on short-term contracts. Companies with more than 500 employees are the most likely to use short-term contracts, with 80 per cent saying that more than 10 per cent of their workforce is employed on this basis.
Another surprising finding is that nearly three-quarters of respondents admit that employees sometimes start work without a contract having been signed, and nearly 40 per cent even say that this happens often. This may also reflect gaps or flaws in human resources management processes, particularly in the way contracts are signed in the sector.
For example, 60 per cent of companies still use signatures on paper and hand delivery. The low adoption rate of electronic signatures (19 per cent) indicates significant potential for process improvement, simplifying them while enhancing security and efficiency. This is undoubtedly a major challenge for cleaning companies in the years to come…
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