Neil Brown, technical director at Hygiene Group, examines
whether in-house or external staff are the best solution to
maintaining a clean, safe, hygienic production facility

Production facilities have to be clean,
and this cannot be left to chance
because of the human risk, the
commercial risk and the impact on
reputation. Contract cleaners traditionally
have an image of high staff turnover and
higher cost, but cost calculations for
comparison between using in-house staff
and outsourcing are often more complex
than first meets the eye, while the better
contract cleaners will generally have taken
significant steps to hold on to reliable staff.

A ‘natural’way of working?
In many manufacturing sectors, in-house
cleaning has traditionally been perceived as
the ‘natural’ way of working as production,
hygiene and facilities managers perceive they
have greater control over the cleaning
process and costs, and that in-house cleaning
offers more flexibility.Whether cleaning is
undertaken by production staff – who by
definition are not specialist cleaners – or by a
dedicated in-house cleaning crew, the staff
will know that site inside-out and are
generally known personally to their
managers, making it theoretically easy to
establish a methodology meeting both
technical and hygiene needs, and delivering
the required quality and consistency. But is it
always so clear cut?
Establishing an effective cleaning regime
entails significant management time given the
level of detail required. The task involves a
gamut of decisions from selecting the correct
type of chemical for the soil and managing
the risks of corrosion, selecting and managing
equipment and consumables suppliers, and
managing ongoing safety requirements. It
also includes selecting cleaning methods –
foaming, pressure-washing, clean-in-place,
and so on – training staff in the most effective
way to clean and monitoring the process
through inspections and audits.

Furthermore, there is the question of
ensuring cleaning systems and methods are
kept up to date. Production demands are
constantly changing, while new product
development and equipment bring new
challenges in cleaning and disinfection. Put
simply, a cleaning regime which several years
ago may have been ideal in terms of staff
numbers, timing, processes and chemicals
cannot be guaranteed to be appropriate or
cost-effective now.

Ongoing quality management takes up a
substantial amount of time too. Even if just
half an hour each day is spent reviewing
reports and audits, this equates to around
three weeks annually.

The question of cost
The cost differential between insourcing and
outsourcing can be tricky to calculate. It is
notoriously difficult to realistically cost inhouse
time, particularly management,
making like-for-like comparison of in-house
against outsourced costs difficult. If, for
example, the in-house cleaning team’s
working times and hours are altered to
accommodate changes in production, they
will undoubtedly have received some
financial recompense.

However, a specialist cleaning contractor
can often take on the job ‘as is’, recruiting
staff to work at the required times without
necessarily needing to pass on additional
staff costs to the customer. The contractor
can also easily access additional staff for
specialist/occasional jobs such as deep cleans.

Internal staff ‘s ‘closeness’ to their working
environment means areas where problems
are starting to appear may not be noticed as
early as they should be. Over time, there are
always areas that look tired, or where stains
and discolouration develop; these can
become ‘wallpaper’, making external audits
invaluable in catching them before they
become an issue.

A recognised benefit of working with
some of the larger chemical suppliers can be
that they see similar problems on many sites,
and can recommend proven solutions to a
specific issue. This is even more true of
nationally-based contract cleaners, whose
multi-site experience will cover not just
chemical selection and use but training,
management of labour, selection and
methods of use of chemicals, documentation
and auditing.

Choosing the right contractor can
sometimes deliver cost savings, but this
should never come at the expense of working
with a partner operating to current standards
and using up-to-date materials and methods.

Indeed, a supplier whose breadth of
experience covers the whole hygiene function
is invaluable not just in correcting ongoing
issues but in avoiding problems in the first
place. It is also key to saving management
time, ensuring safe, legal production and
ultimately in protecting the company’s
brand.