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Indian Cleaning Industry:Towards Collective Action

by Admin
0 comment

Attrition/Minimum Wages

“Attrition is a major problem and the way out is to approach the government to increase minimum wages! Till such time these workers are given a decent standard of living, we cannot expect loyalty,” added Bikram Chada.

“I would say forget the minimum wages, even if service providers pay the existing wages, it would be a great honour,” said Naushad Panjwani, Executive Director, Knight Frank India Pvt. Ltd.

“It is unrealistic to approach the government where minimum wages is concerned. Minimum wages is governed by various factors. It is for us to decide whether we want skilled labour minimum wages or unskilled labour minimum wages,” clarified Archana.

“But, again, the government has already laid down minimum wages, which itself is not being honoured,” added Vivek Mata.

But the counter point to this was that things were changing with auditing and clients have been forced to pay the minimum wages. Systems of checks and balances are here to stay.

“As a service provider, I would be very happy to have high-end mechanisation that comes into play in the cleaning industry. Our company is willing to make investment. But somebody needs to come to us and explain how mechanisation can bring down the cost. I am sure, there would be many benefits by using the same equipment in multiple sites for multiple applications.”-Naushad Panjwani

“As employers why not we follow minimum standards, why wait for the government. Unless educated people come into this industry, the growth will be stunted, equipment will not get used properly and proper chemicals will not be used either. Even if standards are set, unless they are trained and educated they will not understand these standards,” said Vijayasankar.

“Without qualified staff, no amount of training to the day-to-day workers will be effective. With trained manpower, the payment will be good, equipment will be utilised well and attrition levels will come down. Attrition could also be attributed to the fact that this industry lacks respectability. People come here as a last resort and find it rather demeaning to be in this field. We need to bring some respectability to this industry,” added Vijayasankar.

“I feel attrition could be brought down, if the worker feels that he is doing a blue-collared job. In fact, we have to ensure that the workers make a career out of this profession,” says Samit Sanyal, Head-Marketing, JohnsonDiversey.

Mechanisation and Specialisation

“The present time is not conducive for negotiations, yet in the last six months, many contracts were renegotiated at reduced costs. I am surprised that there have been contractors who have agreed and are providing manpower below minimum wages. That is where organised sector comes into play, which does not succumb to pressure of non-compliance to statutory norms,” stated Naushad Panjwani.

“Today, specialisation is something we are shying away from. There is a lot to be done in terms of process improvement. But, the three components of the cleaning industry (equipment, chemical and FM services) are not focussing on specialisation and instead equipment supplier are getting into FM business; security companies are into the cleaning business; pest control companies into housekeeping, caterers getting into cleaning industry… you have a lot of people from other industries coming into this business. This industry is perceived as easy to manage which is not the truth. There are very few entry barriers and we need more, so that we can bring in specialisation, with the intention of client benefit and property being maintained properly. And being in the organised sector, the labour is being taken care of. The equipment sector has a bigger role to play. The amount of mechanisation is very low. The bulk of the unorganised sectors are coming in without any mechanisation and purely on headcount. At best they have is a vacuum cleaner,” continued Naushad.

Lack of recognition/representation

While Naushad and Bikram both agreed that in the evolution process, there will be a shake out and the small or the unorganised companies will shut shops in the long run. “But in the interim period, there will be clients who will receive sub-standard services, the property is going to suffer and the manpower will be the biggest sufferers,” cautioned Naushad.

Key to the success, said Vivek Mata, would be the vendors and the FM companies joining hands. “The big service providers face stiff competition because very small service providers are coming into fray and get business at very low margins. This is the very reason why even big service providers seek cheap equipment and cheap chemicals to ensure that they also stay in the market. If we could join hands and lay down certain parameters, everything would evolve in a definite pattern. Let the customer decide which product, what price and buy it. These parameters thereby would ensure that we don’t cut on margins (service providers) and give quality service to the clients. How do we start setting up these parameters? We need some brainstorming on this.”

Pradeep Mehra, MD, G4S Facility Services Pvt. Ltd, summarised saying, “first of all the basic objective of our sitting here is to recognise this industry. Only then we can talk about what we want to talk. Second, attrition rate is about 26% globally but in our country it is 31%. So it doesn’t have much of a value when it comes at the global level. Third, if you have to be successful, it has to be a more mechanised driven than a manpower driven approach. Fourth, we have to build standards, not individual oriented but association oriented where a benchmark is kept on the lower margins.”

Talking about working on low margins, Mehra added that when the facility manager changed, the fear of losing the contract crept in. “The new facility manager has his different concepts, likes & dislikes and in the process of convincing the new FM, the service provider either retains or loses the contract or introduces new reduced prices. This is happening because of lack of awareness on the part of the client or the FM manager, because the basic concept of housekeeping that everyone knows is jadoo pocha.”

In the case of service provider, when it comes to maintaining a large office, a large call centre or industry or open areas, the concentration is more on the manpower and clients bargaining on margins. “Hence a large initiative is required from both the equipment and service providers to list some good customers from all target groups and educate them about the right standards. May be it is worthwhile making a demonstration,” commented Anil Sethi.

It is necessary that the industry meets contractors designing building to tell that they also need to maintain this building. Time has come to show the budget value for cleaning.

“In other countries, these activities are governed by an association. Today, the biggest lacunae before us is that we do not have a body that puts an advertisement saying that this particular job could be done like this. This awareness has to be brought among customers as everything revolves round the customer. It is time to take the initiative and change the situation.”

Need for a strong platform

Virendra Bhatt, CEO, All Services Under One Roof, felt that If we had to come together, we should take a few common agenda and then proceed from there. “The detailed engineering can be done subsequently. We have to create a platform and bring together people of two different categories. We need to make efforts in the right direction.”

“The other industries go out and out to invest in equipment which would aid production. While with cleaning, unless there is a united body advocating the benefits of cleaning, it isn’t going to make much of a difference,” concluded Anil.

In short, the majority agreed that there was not much point in debating the problems and challenges in front of the cleaning industry without having a formal forum which can prioritise issues and help chart a direction to the benefit of everyone.

Sure, CIJ extends its support to the cleaning industry.

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