The cleaning and janitorial industry is ever-growing and forecasted by Statista to earn over $46 billion dollars in 2020, the highest its ever been.
According to The Willburn Company, office cleaning and janitorial is currently the largest sector within the industry, with educational cleaning coming in a close second. The growing industry means more jobs in facilities management and environmental cleaning. (Source: wilburncompany.com/top-three-commercial-cleaning-trends-in-2019)
In 2019, there is more to the cleaning and janitorial industry than floor cleaners and toilet paper. We are seeing trends that extend to all corners of the industry like never before from the use of robotics to the science behind virus outbreaks.
1. Internet Connected Technology
Commercial cleaning is having more than a moment with “connective cleaning” technologies like internet connected washing machines, floor cleaners and soap dispensers. These systems can indicate the cleaning needs of specific environments, produce data around it, and then send that information to the right people. Think of how an extended-stay hotel that might be benefit from the use of connective cleaning technology for its cleaning services. Instead of staff constantly checking on rooms for sanitation needs, they can now be notified through apps and software about when and which room a service is needed.
Facility employees may worry about their job security as more cleaning services become automated, but the automation could actually help employees and business owners by freeing up time to focus on more specialized services. It can also improve customer service.
Every facility is different, so the needs are rarely the same even within the same industry. A technology that may work for one hotel may not for the next, for example. Take the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. They adapted an app to help advance their housekeeping duties, but when management didn’t get feedback from the staff about issues that arose after implementation, it caused problems which could have been “avoided or mitigated if there had been an open dialogue.” (Waxie.com)
2. Green Cleaning and Workplace Wellness
Across the glove, there is a huge focus on reducing plastic packaging lately, and the same is true for creating greener, more environmentally friendly commercial cleaners. Millennials are starting to enter the work force and will soon be the generation hiring commercial cleaners. According to Waxie.com, Millennials and younger generations are more ecologically conscious than Baby Boomers, with the advent the tiny house movement and eco-friendly tourism, for example. They will soon be the decision-makers advocating for more eco-conscious cleaning technologies in the industry. (Source: info.waxie.com/blog/6-trends-in-the-cleaning-industry-for-2019)
Cleaning products like Simple Green and Greenworks use people-and-environmentally-safe ingredients keeping not only the planet healthy, but the workers who come in direct contact and those who work for hours inside the facilities. Green cleaning can promote employee wellness by reducing the use harmful chemicals.
3. Managing Outbreak Risks
Pandemic and epidemic illness is always cause for concern, but in the last few years, we’ve seen several outbreaks across the globe like the flu, Hepatitis A, and even Ebola that have been unprecedented in the more modern era. The flu virus in 2018 took the lives of about 80,000 making it sadly a record-breaking outbreak.
Cleaning and janitorial services can reduce the spread of virus by cleaning and disinfecting “hot spots” more frequently using single-step cleaner surface disinfectants or spraying systems that can target larger areas prone to germs, dirt, and disease — like the floor of a waste management facility. (Source: info.waxie.com/blog/6-trends-in-the-cleaning-industry-for-2019)
4. Product Ingredient Transparency
We are not just employees looking for better ways to do our jobs. We are also consumers, trying to provide safe and happy lives for ourselves and our families. Did you ever wonder what’s in the products that we use daily at home and at work? Until recently, there were few legal disclosure laws about product ingredients in consumable products. Fortunately, 2017 saw legislation passed in California requiring that ingredients in cleaning products be listed on the product labels as part of the Cleaning Product Right to Know Act of 2017 or Senate Bill 258 (SB-258). New York State passed parallel legislation in 2018 that requires the disclosure of household cleaning ingredients. Read it here.
There will be more legislation passed around the country in conjunction with California and New York, which will mandate manufacturers and distributors to label their products differently and provide its consumers with right-to-know information about the products they use, either at the household or commercial level. This trend will soon be a boulder in the cleaning and janitorial industry.
Sources: Waxie.com / willburncompany.com