Hybrid Work Playbook: How Smart Cleaning Technology Fuels Facilities Management
Facilities management is a complex enterprise that involves juggling multiple responsibilities, from maintaining space cleanliness to ensuring operational efficiency and optimal equipment performance to managing energy usage. Traditionally, many of these tasks have been handled manually, through time-consuming and resource-intensive processes, often resulting in inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.
However, with the advent of smart technology and the rise of hybrid working models, facilities management is undergoing a transformation.
By harnessing the power of smart cleaning technology, facilities management teams can streamline their operations, align services with building usage, save time and money, and drive more top- and bottom-line value for clients – all while contributing to a more sustainable future.
In this piece, we’ll explore how emerging smart cleaning technologies can power up your services and help you maximise client value in the era of hybrid work.
Revolutionising Facilities Management: The Power of Smart Cleaning
Smart cleaning technology represents a paradigm shift in the way we approach facilities management. Gone are the days of rigid cleaning schedules and wasteful resource allocation. Instead, today’s smart cleaning technology – like Infogrid Smart Cleaning Pro – leverages sensors, advanced data analytics, and AI-powered automation to optimise cleaning processes in real time.
By monitoring factors such as real-time occupancy levels, cleanliness metrics, and cleaner attendance and dwell time, smart cleaning solutions can empower facilities managers to intelligently allocate resources where they are needed most, ensuring that spaces remain clean and hygienic for occupants while minimising wasted time, effort, and materials.
For example, some smart cleaning systems use advanced IoT sensors to detect building usage patterns in real time and help facilities managers adjust cleaning schedules accordingly. Others utilise machine learning algorithms to predict peak usage times and help allocate cleaning staff. By proactively addressing cleaning needs based on data-driven insights, facilities management teams can improve efficiency and significantly reduce labour costs – while still delivering exceptionally clean and high-quality spaces for occupants.
Cleaning Tech Built for Hybrid Working
Many of today’s latest technologies are also designed to help facilities managers adapt to the emergent challenges associated with hybrid working and flexible space usage. This can give providers a needed edge in a competitive market environment, delivering transparency and business-critical insights into occupancy patterns that would not be possible without technology.
Optimised Operations
For example, smart cleaning technologies utilise advanced hardware to monitor occupancy combined with cloud-based management platforms that seamlessly record and store data. This integration allows facilities managers to drill-down into real-time space usage and optimise cleaning operations based on occupant needs. With hybrid working models leading to notoriously varying levels of occupancy, these capabilities can help managers efficiently allocate resources where they are needed most, without overcommitting teams on the ground.
Increased Productivity
Additionally, by automating task management and leveraging sensors to detect when cleaning is needed, smart cleaning solutions can save cleaners on the ground time and effort. This increased efficiency allows teams to focus on high-priority tasks, enhancing overall productivity while still ensuring that spaces are cleaned to a high degree of quality. This can be especially valuable in buildings where there is a need to adapt quickly to changing demands due to hybrid working arrangements.
Enhanced Transparency and Accountability
Smart cleaning technologies offer seamless data collection and cleaner dwell-time tracking, creating a digital audit trail of cleaning activities without requiring cleaners to scan QR codes to prove their attendance. This unprecedented transparency ensures that cleaning tasks are completed to high standards and provides facilities managers with the visibility they need to monitor performance effectively.
Strategic Insights
Many technologies offer space usage heat maps, offering valuable, at-a-glance insights into occupant behaviours and space utilisation patterns. Facilities managers can leverage this data to make informed decisions about resource allocation and overall cleaning strategies and guide in contract discussions.
Proactive Maintenance
With dynamic predictive cleaning capabilities, smart cleaning technologies enable facilities managers to anticipate cleaning needs based on space usage trends. This proactive approach helps in maintaining cleanliness and hygiene standards, even in environments with fluctuating occupancy levels due to hybrid working arrangements.
On the whole, today’s smart cleaning technologies can equip facilities managers with the data and tools they need to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and adapt to the challenges posed by the rise of hybrid working.
Sample Implementation Playbook
Ready to take the next step and enhance your operations? We’ve put together a high-level playbook you can use to evaluate and implement technology with an eye towards hybrid working.
Step 1: Assess Current Cleaning Processes and Hybrid Work Challenges
Evaluate existing cleaning procedures in the context of hybrid working models, considering fluctuating occupancy levels and flexible space usage.
Coordinate with property management teams to gather any existing information on occupancy trends and tenant schedules, and identify overlaps and gaps: are there underutilised floors or spaces?
If possible, centralise existing cleaning rota information to establish a “baseline” for metrics like cleaner dwell time and efficiency.
Step 2: Research Smart Cleaning Solutions with Hybrid Work Adaptability
Research smart cleaning technologies that are specifically designed to address the challenges posed by hybrid working models. (Infogrid Smart Cleaning Pro was built to address these challenges! Learn more here).
Look for features such as real-time occupancy monitoring, predictive cleaning capabilities, cleaning validation, and flexible scheduling options tailored to variable occupancy patterns.
Prioritise technologies that can integrate with existing workflows or which minimise the need for site staff to log into additional applications; this can aid in adoption and accelerate time-to-value.
Step 3: Set Clear Objectives and Goals Aligned with Hybrid Work Needs
Define KPIs for your technology implementation (e.g. team response time, efficiency, cleaning validation). Ensure your technology partner can support easy tracking and reporting against these KPIs.
Focus on improving adaptability, efficiency, and responsiveness to changing occupancy levels while maintaining and verifying cleanliness standards.
Step 4: Develop a Pilot and Deployment Plan
Identify buildings in your client portfolio that represent a range of hybrid and full-time work scenarios, including spaces with varying levels of occupancy and usage patterns.
If applicable, select a subset of buildings in which to test the smart cleaning technology in real-world work environments. This can help you assess the effectiveness in driving team efficiency and adapting to changing conditions.
Step 5: Team Training and Education
Coordinate with your technology partner to provide training for on-the-ground cleaning staff on how to integrate smart cleaning technology into their workflows.
Ensure all managers understand how to leverage the solution to plan, track, and report.
Work with your partner to build custom reports as is applicable. (Infogrid’s Smart Cleaning Pro solution offers out-of-the-box reports and an intuitive, flexible report builder, ensuring you get the insights you need. Learn more here).
Step 6: Rollout and Integration
Work with your technology partner to deploy the smart cleaning technology across all relevant facilities, ensuring you leave time for testing and data quality assurance.
Layer in available scheduling information to help you dynamically adjust cleaning routines based on real-time occupancy data and remote work schedules.
Step 7: Performance Monitoring and Optimization
Monitor performance against your established baseline.
Optimise cleaning schedules and resource allocation based on live occupancy data and any feedback from building occupants, ensuring that cleaning activities align with hybrid work needs.
Step 8: Continuous Improvement with a Focus on Hybrid Work Adaptability
Foster a culture of continuous improvement within your organisation by regularly reviewing the data with all key stakeholders, focusing on enhancing adaptability, efficiency, and responsiveness to hybrid work dynamics.
Regularly review and update cleaning processes to ensure they remain aligned with the evolving needs of your buildings and occupants.
Final Thoughts
Today’s most advanced technologies can help facilities management teams save costs, drive better resource allocation, and reduce their environmental footprint, all while mitigating the operational unpredictability of hybrid work. By leveraging the insights provided by these technologies, facilities management teams can efficiently deliver an enhanced service while improving the tenant experience and driving top- and bottom-line value for building ownership. One thing is certain: the integration and adoption of smart technology solutions will play a critical role in creating more sustainable and efficient facilities for generations to come.
