ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

In France daytime cleaning has been a point of discussion in recent years, reports Christian Bouzols.

Daytime working in the cleaning sector has attracted increasing attention in France since about 2010. This issue is of considerable social importance given its impact on the quality of life of cleaners.

Nevertheless, cleaning activities continue to take place out of office hours, particularly at night, in the vast majority of cases in France.

In 2009 the federation of cleaning contractors (FEP) included day working/continuous working among the 51 demands of its sustainable development programme. Since then a great many experiments and assessments have been carried out in partnership with the state, local authorities and private companies. They all lead to the conclusion that setting up changes and innovations within organisations is no easy matter, but that the results are often conclusive and advantageous, to both employers and employees.

While most cleaning companies now say they’ve taken steps to introduce day working, or that they intend to do so, this doesn’t seem to indicate that the sector is committed to that path.
One can’t predict that day working is inevitable in the cleaning sector. In any case, it will take time to be established because habits are well entrenched. Nevertheless it is under consideration, as demonstrated by a survey carried out in 2015 by the consulting firm Atemis at the request of FEP before and after daytime cleaning had been instituted at two sites.

In the first of these cases, 26 per cent of employees initially stated  having cleaning work carried out during office hours would cause them a problem. However at the end of the survey period, only three per cent still felt they had a problem having cleaners around.

The switch to daytime cleaning didn’t involve any serious changes, as perceived by 86  per cent of the employees surveyed. On the second site, where the survey was carried out after the end of the day cleaning work period, 85  per cent of the employees said they hadn’t been disturbed by the presence of cleaners in their offices.

A much larger survey was carried out by SCA-Tork, the Swedish manufacturer of hygiene products, among 3,056 office workers across Europe. It took place among establishments that had switched to day cleaning work in Sweden, the UK, France, Germany, Russia and the Netherlands. It produced generally positive assessments, although they were sometimes mixed. Regarding the cleanliness of their working environment, 84 per cent of the people interviewed considered that cleaning as such had a positive impact on their professional lives, and 71 per cent considered this activity impacted positively on company profits.

Regarding day time working, 49  per cent of people interviewed said they were willing to interact socially with cleaners and to co-exist with them in a spirit of co-working, whereas 14 per cent of them were more in favour of cleaners remaining invisible.

Additionally, 77 per cent of the people interviewed said that they greeted the cleaners daily at their work place (0.6 per cent said that they never did so), but 41 per cent admitted they’d never had the least conversation with them. And 57 per cent of the office workers interviewed indicated they were uncomfortable when cleaners came to their office to do their work in their presence.