ESG, which stands for environmental, social and governance, is a regulatory, commercial, and moral framework for conducting business that is reshaping the corporate world as we know it. As capital markets and consumer mindsets shift, “doing good” is rapidly becoming “doing business.” At the same time, there is another suite of services often overlooked as part of the ESG effort. Your approach to commercial cleaning and sanitation in your workplaces should be considered a strategic component of ESG.
ESG has long been a set of practices established and documented by business leaders to reflect their organisations’ values and therefore their brand’s position. Now, ESG is rapidly moving from optional and discretionary to being a core component of a company’s long-term value. Under that lens, aspects of your commercial cleaning operations become much more critical than previously thought.
Exploring governance
ESG is a portfolio of commitments and transparent activities that your company takes on. In terms of sustainability and impact on people and planet, cleaning has much to do with how your company performs. Your selection of third-party service providers for janitorial, maintenance, housekeeping, landscaping, and environmental cleanup is a true test of your brand’s values and how your company lives what it claims to believe. Making the right choices in that regard will pay off over time through a host of cost, risk, and reputation advantages.
Environmental element: Does cleaning green help the planet?
Capital markets, consumers, regulators, and competitors all evaluate a company’s impact on the environment. The rapid acceleration of global warming and the re-emergence of previously contained diseases have led businesses and individuals to have new expectations for public safety, sustainability and carbon neutrality.
Eliminating the use of harsh, toxic chemicals and switching to biodegradable, earth-friendly cleaners is one easy starting point that’s more achievable than ever. Reducing the consumption of disposable materials, such as microfibre cloths, concentrated chemicals, and high-efficiency vacuum filtration, as well as adopting low-moisture carpet cleaning, are all other ways to green your cleaning.
Commercial cleaning also impacts energy and water use, as well as the safety, health, and overall appearance of your facility to outside audiences. Simple tasks, such as proper e-waste disposal and recycling paper towels, are easily measurable improvements for your environmental impact. These metrics can even be calculated to build ESG plans that support your specific decarbonisation and ecological footprint goals.
Social aspects: Commercial cleaning with care and trust
The second ESG factor of your office cleaning involves the well-being of your employees and brand. Many cleaning services companies have large, on-site employees or hire third-party labour to do cleaning work, often without supervision. Looking after the safety of cleaners, their training and handling, product safety, hygiene, and other people-facing policies in this outsourced work makes a statement to employees, customers and prospective talent about what you value and how you treat those both in your office and those on whose backs your offices shine. In the unfortunate event of a food contamination or hygiene scandal, demonstrating your protocols for worker safety can protect and insulate your brand.
Business as usual is now a thing of the past. Today, brands are facing regulatory, legislative, and brand pressure to improve their internal social practices in line with consumer mindsets on ethical business. The appearance of your offices, the health of the air, and the tracking and tracing of materials are all part of the employee experience of your brand, and therefore a material metric linked to revenue generation and team loyalty.
Governance, good for brand integrity and competitive edge
One of the most undervalued aspects of ESG is good governance and documentation. When choosing commercial cleaning services near me, look for partners that can help you make the right choices by sharing information that gives visibility into their vendors, supply chains, waste tracking, recycling, employee pay and working conditions, energy-saving initiatives, water conservation and more. This is how brands build competitive advantage through trust and risk reduction.
Cleaning services and vendors that can provide a service in alignment with these goals, including backing it up with evidence to document it in real-time, are a first choice and a differentiator from the competition. It should not be viewed as an optional add-on or as unaffordable. The rising cost of regulation, risk and a failed brand that does not match its promises cannot be balanced without appropriate levels of supply chain and ESG visibility.
Cleaning for the future
Commercial cleaning is not what it used to be. As consumer expectations and capital markets realign with the new status quo of trust, sustainability and impact, the cleaning, janitorial and maintenance services provided in your businesses need to have as much oversight and documentation as other operational aspects.
Decarbonisation and impact on people, habitat and biodiversity have moved from the margins of investment decisions to the centre, as mainstream standards of business. That shift is ongoing and affects how every vendor, contract, supplier and building management decision is made, and therefore how a brand is viewed.
Ask any employee what their impression of your brand is, and they will respond in terms of cleanliness, safety and how much care you visibly take in these matters. The bar has been raised. The same due diligence you apply to your product design or capital markets will be required for vendors, customers and operations in the near future. If you start now, the transition will be much easier.
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