The discussion on the dearth of skilled
and trained manpower in the cleaning industry has remained an inconclusive
topic; often raising disputable questions like “why should one invest in
training workers who switch jobs for an extra penny”; “what is there to train
them in cleaning”; and so on...
An interesting point surfaced during a
discussion with service providers – “if there is training facility available,
we would definitely want our cleaning staff to get trained but only if the
duration is for a day or two. If the training extends to one week or 15 days it
would be difficult to spare workers.” This raises further questions: what to
train, how much to train, how many days to train…
Ironically, India faces not only dearth of
skilled cleaning workers but also lack of proper training programmes. Training
is restricted to what workers learn on-site, where many hired from the local
areas are probably holding the broom for the first time. In the absence of
proper training facilities, a few of the equipment suppliers have opened up
training facilities in the recent past. This move by equipment suppliers is
largely to ensure that their machines are handled properly. A few service
providers, on the other hand, have established facilities at their offices to
provide basic training. In a layman’s perception, cleaning is a mundane
activity which holds no business potential and hence, providing training for
cleaning is understandably inappreciable to them. Improbably so, even for many
FM professionals, training takes a back seat. Training is provided for the sake
of training. FM professionals here refer both to service providers and client
companies.
Better training for better productivity
It is important to provide the right and
required training “because training, in the long run, will help in better
productivity and more efficient use of all resources.
While 99.99% of the people believe that
cleaning is something that anyone can do, every other person gets into the
cleaning business either as a worker or a service provider. However, it is this
mindset that has to be altered to ‘cleaning as a science that can be learned
through training and proper practice’.
Profile of Workers
When it comes to sourcing workers for
cleaning, the service industry looks at locally available manpower which often
includes those from the area close to the worksite. They are given what is
termed “on-job training”! This category of workers hired by such service
companies are novices put on a professional job. Engaging such workers has
resulted in absenteeism, dropouts, poor service delivery and mistrust on the
service industry as a whole. The service company gets penalized or loses the
contract too!
Another category of workers is the
security guards-cum-cleaners. It is not surprising to find a security guard
outside an ATM doubling up as a housekeeper. Using the simplest of tools – a
cotton mop cloth and a broom – the security guard cleans up the ATM room
probably once and periodically when it gets visibly dirty. Training or no
training, he still does the job of cleaning for the sake of cleaning.
Duration of training
The duration for training remains a
deciding factor on whether to train or not to train. It is challenging too.
“Getting a fresher off the street or a school dropout to train in cleaning for
better prospects has its own challenges. Hence, if a slum dweller is being
offered a six months or one year course, it would not hold his interest.
At the services end, even if a company
decides to send its workers for professional training, it would mean loss of
business during the days of training. This is one of the major reasons why
service providers refrain from sparing their workers even if it is for training
for better productivity.
Thus, service providers have created a
schedule for training which includes pre-site training, on-job training,
periodic training…in an attempt to provide the worker the necessary skills to
perform. However, this ‘ideal alternative’ of training schedule adopted by the
service provider is not implemented as projected. Often the workers are pulled
out to complete errands in the midst of the on-site training or workers engaged
for cleaning are pulled into doing tasks other than cleaning…
Thus, such trained workers are tagged
‘trained’ but yet not trained.
Pre-training
Keeping in mind the increasing need for
skilled manpower, the VDMA-run training centre in India in the last two years
has been extending training to marginal people from the slums and from the
countryside. “They offer these people 45-day training at the Institute and
thereafter depending on their skills, resources and capabilities they are
absorbed by the cleaning industry. This way the industry can engage skilled
workers and there is no loss of business in training them later or on site.”
The Institute has recently introduced
Supervisor training. “Training takes an important turn when it comes to
supervisors, essentially because a supervisor is the director behind the whole
process of cleaning. Cleaning is not just cleaning from left to right. A
supervisory training teaches focuses on how to study the floor plan, how to
calculate the time and resources required for cleaning and how to formulate a
strategy to clean. This way the supervisor is able to get work done more
effectively and efficiently; there is more activity and better results,”
The major issue faced by the Institute
with students is to convince the people in the slum areas and from the street
to come to the Institute for training and better life. “When you pass by the
slums, you will find that satellite television and mobile is given preference
and only then comes the toilet and the shower. There is a need to spread
awareness that it is important to have a good health and good environment and
one need to clean oneself, wear clean clothes and live in clean surroundings.
“We are happy that the Modi government has
launched the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan. With cleaning being raised at the
political level, it will speed up the awareness process. If there is no
awareness, people will not know the need for professional cleaning. Buildings can
be maintained, houses can be maintained, people can live in a hygiene
environment and a lot more issues can be addressed through professional
cleaning.”
Wage Structure
In the present scenario of the wage structure,
a fresher joining the cleaning job is on the same pay scale of the one who has
put in few years of work. Hence, it is important that skilled and trained
workers being hired are placed on the higher pay slab and are engaged in
specific projects with a clear career growth path. “This will motivate the trained
workers and they can foresee their future themselves as a supervisor in a year
or two.
“Pay slabs differ
from segment to segment depending on the kind of work that needs to be done.
The job profile of a worker in a hospital is much different from a worker in a
hotel. Moreover, there is a big challenge with the wage slabs in countries
following the minimum wages which are region specific. Sometimes, a market driven
wage is much better than the minimum wages, as it is subjected to change from
time to time and place to place. In fact, the framework of the minimum wages
should be altered. The worker should be able to make a living out of the wages
and a worker who is working better with better skills and training, needs to be
paid more if we have to keep in the job for a longer time and made more
productive,”
