Health & Safety Essentials - September 2011
Contract cleaning can mean using chemicals and working in difficult conditions, which can be challenging in terms of both safety and the environment. So Consultant Cleaners’ performance, especially in winning its thirteenth consecutive RoSPA gold, is quite something.
Consultant Cleaners Ltd, together with Consultant Caterers Ltd, forms part of the Consultant Services Group Ltd, a privately owned business started in 1969. The two companies operate independently but work together on a number of sites. There are many customers in the education sector as well as leisure, retail and commercial offices, located across the country from the Scottish borders down to the Midlands.
Opinions of Others
Health and Safety Officer Sally Gorman has worked at the company for 21 years and so was there when the first of the thirteen golds was gained. She had completed a safety scholarship with RoSPA to get the necessary qualifications and, since the general opinion was the company was good in health and safety matters, saw the RoSPA awards as a way to find out what others thought. A gold award was won in the first year, leading to a gold medal after five years, the President’s Award five years later and the Order of Distinction on the horizon as the next target.
Sally says of the award: “I think it shows that we demonstrate as a company that we care about our staff and our accident rates obviously show that. It also makes good business sense to have zero accidents. There are costs incurred following an accident and our aim is to keep them to a minimum. This is achieved through our procedures and key personnel.”
Around 1,900 staff are employed and, given the nature of contract cleaning, many of them are part-time. They all receive induction training and there’s a support team of supervisors, area managers and operations managers who visit sites regularly. Training is ongoing and there are frequent toolbox talks where health and safety is discussed as well as a newsletter that goes to all staff to keep them informed. The minimum aim is to conform to legislation but, according to Sally, the company goes much further: “We’re a cleaning company so we must have COSHH assessments on site and all other appropriate documentation. But we don’t just comply with the basics; we always go above and beyond that.”
All new clients have their sites risk assessed so that potential hazards are identified and control measures are put in place. Any changes require a review and there’s an annual review even if everything stays the same. To ensure all contracts run smoothly, there’s an ongoing dialogue with the client that, as Sally explains, begins early: “At the start of a contract, we sit in on the client’s induction training so we can highlight anything we need to know about the client’s activities. It’s very much a partnership.”
Working at Height
A common source of accidents is working at height and this is avoided other than in exceptional circumstances. Sally says: “We don’t encourage our staff to take their feet off the ground. We have a rule that they go to hand-held height, whatever they find comfortable. If they can’t get it with a feather flick, a mop or a sweeping brush, it doesn’t get done.”
Cleaning at height and deep cleaning are specialist tasks that are often undertaken by sub-contractors. However, all sub-contractors go through a vetting process before they start and have to provide up-to-date risk assessments, method statements and other documents on an annual basis. They also have to conform not only to Consultant Cleaner’s health and safety policies but to their environmental requirements as well. This, as Sally points out, means avoiding the use of chemicals that can be dangerous as well as harmful to the environment: “We use cleaning products that are non-harmful. We use very efficient machinery and we are constantly looking to reduce our carbon footprint. We’re always looking at minimal products that don’t cause too much risk to any of our staff.
Healthy Workforce
All accidents are recorded, accident statistics are produced monthly and trends are highlighted. If the figures are moving in the wrong direction, causes are identified and corrective action is taken. The company is also concerned about the overall health of its workforce and has worked in partnership with the Better Health at Work team from Kirklees Council. This resulted in a number of workshops that covered topics such as better diet, recognising stress, alcohol and exercise. “It was excellent,” comments Sally. “It demonstrated our commitment to our staff and to the welfare of our staff. But they did buy into it as well and they found it really helpful.”
The level of commitment possibly illustrates why Consultant Cleaners has won thirteen consecutive RoSPA Golds as well as other successes. These include being a training centre for the British Institute of Cleaning Science, meaning that the company has a number of assessors who can train the staff so they gain a cleaning operative’s proficiency certificate. Sally says: “It’s about raising standards within the cleaning industry. It’s also about valuing our staff and, by putting them through this qualification, it gives them a sense of worth.”
Consultant Cleaners is a finalist for the Golden Service Award, which Sally describes as ‘the Oscars of the cleaning industry’. This is in recognition of high quality work as well as health and safety standards on a particular customer site and will sit well alongside the fourteenth RoSPA Gold should it be achieved.
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