Importance of paying Living Wage to office cleaners

For a long time, many cleaning agencies have been putting their prices up, but not the wages of their cleaners, and we feel it is time this stopped, and here’s why.

What is London Living Wage?

Right now, the minimum wage across the UK is £8.91 if you’re over 23. The Living Wage Foundation states that the living wage in the UK is £9.90, and in London, this is £11.05. If you live in London, then, and are being paid minimum wage, you need to find an extra £2 an hour just to live. This is why so many people in London have more than one job because they don’t have a choice.

The Living Wage Foundation decided to give employers, like us, a choice. We have made our pledge to pay all of our cleaners the London Living Wage, along with 9,000 other businesses from loads of other sectors in the UK. Why? Because paying our cleaners the living wage is the right thing to do for them, us and our customers!

Office cleaning – the daily duties of an office cleaner in London

Office cleaners do so much on a daily basis, but the typical things they do include:

Hoovering

Dusting

Sweeping

Mopping

Emptying bins

Washing up

Antiviral cleaning

and more.

Office cleaners have been keeping our offices clean and tidy for years, but in the last few years, they have also been protecting us from covid-19. You may think that the cleaning tasks there are simple and easy, which granted, at home they are. After all, if you miss a bit of stuff while hoovering, you can get it next time. Or if you forget to dust one shelf, it isn’t a big deal. Well, as a professional cleaner, it is your job to pay attention to the finer details. To ensure that nothing is missed while hoovering or dusting. And try doing those tasks to the best of your ability in 10 office buildings every day; it isn’t as easy as we think! Office cleaners need to be on top of their game. If they aren’t, the customer isn’t going to be happy. So, if that office cleaner is working two jobs and is tired and not focused, how they can do their cleaning job correctly?

The Benefits of Paying Living Wage to office cleaners

There are so many benefits to paying a living wage to employees. As a professional cleaning business that does pay its office cleaners the London living wage, here is our opinion on the benefits.

For the cleaner

The benefits of providing a living wage to a cleaner are that they don’t need a second job to make ends meet. They can work for one place and earn enough to provide for their family. They can even afford to save, go on holiday or have a few meals out every so often. All of the things that people who earn above minimum wage take for granted, the cleaner can now do and enjoy. It also gives them job security in a way. You see, if they weren’t being paid a living wage, they would likely want to leave and find somewhere better. However, since they are on the living wage, they can stay with the company and learn new skills to grow in their role or climb the ladder.

For the customer

You may not think that the customer of a cleaning company is affected by them paying their cleaners a living wage. However, because the cleaners have the freedom to work one job, the cleaner is more focused. They aren’t tired from working another job, and they are happier. All of this means that the cleaner will clean better and be in better spirits while they are in your office or your home. Also, as we know our cleaners will stick around, we can invest more in their training. So, the customer gets a better experience, the cleaner gets a glowing review, and everyone is happy.

For the cleaning company

The cleaning company can also benefit from giving their cleaners a living wage. If we were to pay our cleaners minimum wage, for example, we would have a much higher staff turnover than we do. The minimum wage is currently set to £8.91 nationally, while the living wage in London is £11.05. That’s over £2 less than what our cleaners need to survive. This means that all of our cleaners would be looking for extra work or different work.

However, because living wage cleaners receive better pay, staff stick with the company because they can earn more money than many other places. This means that we can put training into place and help them grow as cleaners. We can invest more in training sessions, which give our cleaners the experience and skill they need. This also means we can train our cleaners for different cleaning tasks to offer more cleaning services, like the antiviral services we recently rolled out.

Paying people the living wage also means that sick days decline too. This is likely because the person is ‘pulling a sicky’ so they can go and work somewhere else for a day or two and earn a bit more. So by paying the living wage, this decrease means we don’t need to replace cleaners at short notice, and our customers always get their homes cleaned on time by happy people.

The benefits to the living wage don’t stop there, but those are just some of the benefits that we have seen with cleaners receiving the living wage. The cleaners work extremely hard whether that is in offices or homes across London. They deserve the living wage, and it just makes sense too! It benefits everyone. Your employees, your customers and your business will benefit from you paying your employees the living wage!

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