Businesses spend a lot of money to stand out. Presentation is all important and the attention to detail in maintaining a brand’s reputation commands significant investment. However, standing out for the wrong reasons also comes at a cost.
Potential customers often request a tour of your premises as part of their assessment of new suppliers. Equally, it might be tempting to invite a prospect to see your operation. Either way, you want them to see you at your best. Hours of effort ensuring your production line is running smoothly only for them to see an untidy warehouse undermines all that. Worse still if unsightly or possibly dangerous spillages appear to have been left unattended for days.
The need for change
It’s not just car plants that have transformed from oily, grimy operations into gleaming, well-lit environments with painted floors and walkways. Modern companies now have a keen understanding of the benefits of a properly implemented cleaning strategy.
Aside from the obvious influence that a well maintained working environment can have on employee morale, there is the impact on productivity. Clear aisles and walkways not only improve access but also reduce risks of slips, trips and falls that bring their own consequences. Movements of goods around the workplace are unhindered by obstacles or spillages that have to be avoided.
Discarded material such as pallet wrap is a hazard for moving vehicles. Damage caused to axles by plastic banding and strapping is easily avoidable. Dust and other debris blocks radiators and clogs air filters. This disrupts planned maintenance schedules designed to keep your operation running smoothly. Cleaning out these blockages, with its associated time-is-money delays, is preventable. Expensive equipment isn’t the only source of issues from airborne dust. Long term exposure for employees can have equally damaging implications for employers as injuries do.
Risk-free benefits
These all seem perfectly rational reasons why companies pay attention to cleaning. But are there influences from a higher level, broader considerations that can provide that direction?
Large corporations often issue clear guidelines for their sites and this can stem from expectations for presentation and also a commitment to ISO standards.
Motivations for managing waste and recycling for 14001 compliance can extend to preventing skips of refuse blowing around not only your yard but neighbouring sites too.
All these attempts to avoid risk come with added benefits. A regime that maintains the floor regularly helps prevent damage to floor coatings from spillages that might otherwise require expensive refurbishment.
Customer choice
Whether you have the resources to manage these tasks in-house with dedicated or rotating resource or you choose to outsource cleaning, you can be sure that there are options available.
Whereas previously the prospect of acquiring cleaning equipment would mean outright purchase and management approval, the market is changing. When asset management specialist Briggs Equipment was announced as the national dealer for the Hako range of cleaning equipment in the UK, this brought with it a number of benefits. As an equipment contract hire provider, the prospect of paying weekly helps budgeting and frees up cash for other investment. With a team of 600 mobile engineers, an in-house finance company and experience supporting organisations with varied fleets of machinery, the landscape is now very different.
In the event that you contract out your requirements to a 3rd party, you know that by using Hako equipment they can be as competitive as possible and have the reliability to give you confidence the task will be done.
A bright future
With so much at stake for companies that already have their primary business to focus on, it’s important to take advantage when an industry sector transforms its offering.
These changes in customer demands and the expectations for better service drive industries to improve. How many other areas could benefit from this same approach?
BRIGGS EQUIPMENT UK LTD
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