It's clear that cleanliness hygiene and safety will be vital for returning members and therefore, for clubs’ success, even their very survival.
One national chain’s Twitter feed saw a 3,900% increase in tweets regarding cleanliness & hygiene just before lockdown versus an increase of only 1,363% of tweets regarding membership cancellation or postponement. Snippets of data from live member surveys during lockdown have also confirmed this point: in one example, social distancing was named as very important by 64%, but 87% cited cleanliness as very important for them to return to clubs.
What though does cleanliness, actually mean? What should we be aiming for? How do we go about achieving it? There are lots of competing viewpoints on this topic. And so, in this article, we'll try to demystify the subject for you.
Clean vs sanitise vs disinfect
The first, critical point, you must understand is the difference between cleaning, sanitising and disinfecting:
· Cleaning is the removal of contamination
· Sanitising is the reduction of viruses and bacteria from the surface
· Disinfection is the removal of viruses or bacteria from the surface
You cannot sanitize or disinfect a surface that is dirty.
The NHS says: “Disinfection is only effective if the surface is thoroughly cleaned beforehand”
What members expect
Some commentators have stated they don't believe members will be expecting a “medical level of cleanliness” when clubs reopen.
However, if your goal is to be hygienically clean, you absolutely do need to aim for an “as new” standard of cleanliness. Otherwise, any attempt to disinfect or sanitise will not be fully effective.
If we are increasing cleaning with a goal of ensuring safety, we absolutely must do effective cleaning to remove all contamination from surfaces.
If members return after lockdown and see pristinely clean facilities, their reaction will be: “Wow, my club has gone above and beyond. They really care about me. And I believe this is a safe environment to visit.”
If, conversely, they walk through the door and you still have grubby changing room floors and body fat stained shower walls, they're going to think: “What the hell have these guys been doing for the last three months? Why don't they care about my safety? If they can't even be bothered to clean the place properly, how on earth can I believe that there's no coronavirus here?”
What is clean?
The leisure sector has suffered for many years from poor standards of cleanliness. There are all sorts of drivers for this:
One of the results is that managers often don't really know what true cleanliness is. I don’t believe managers want the poor standards that have perpetuated; they seem not to notice just how bad things are.
Fortunately, there are three ways to assess true cleanliness, which I call 3D Cleanliness:
1) Standards: How does a surface look? How does it feel? How does the area smell?
2) Hygiene: this can be scientifically measured
3) Slip safety (for floors only): which, again, can be scientifically measured
As mentioned above, you cannot have a hygienic surface without it first being cleaned. However, it is possible to have a surface which appears to be clean, but is not hygienic and / or a floor surface which appears to be clean, but is slippery when wet.
Cleaning has moved on from “does it look okay” and “are we doing it cheaply” to “is it being done properly?” “Are we getting the outcomes?” “Can we prove this to ourselves and our clients?”
How to achieve true cleanliness
We’ve developed a model called ROTAS to help you.
This sets out the five factors you need to get right in a deep clean process. Or, indeed, this is applicable to ongoing cleaning and maintenance too. Remember that, whilst it's critical your club is clean for reopening, it also needs to stay that way!
Work through each of the factors and consider what you could do with each. They are all interconnected and interrelated, though: If one of the five fails, the cogs will grind to a halt. You need to tick all the boxes.
Trying to do a deep clean too quickly (therefore cheaply) will see it fail to achieve the outcomes you need because you’ll fall foul of the ROTAS model.
What's the best way to deliver a deep clean? Can I do it myself in-house, or should I outsource it?
It's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility to achieve a good standard of deep cleaning yourself.
However, there could be various barriers: from the availability of time, to the availability of labour, to the skill and experience of that labour, to the products and equipment that you have available and, critically, to the condition of the club before you start.
Overall, if you want to try doing a deep clean in-house, I suggest you review the ROTAS and 3d Cleanliness models and try a small area to see if you can achieve an acceptable result.
If you can’t, try a different process and keep iterating until you succeed, or give a specialist a call. If you can, then crack on but remember to check that you are replicating that standard. For example, you can clean 2 floor tiles for 20 minutes and get them very clean, but trying to replicate that across a floor is almost impossible.
Can my daily cleaning company do it for me?
Across the sector, clubs with outsourced cleaning are, in my experience, just as poor as clubs cleaned in-house.
Further, deep cleaning and daily cleaning are two wholly different animals. Typically in leisure, a “deep clean” has involved asking a handful of people to stay late, getting take away pizza, and deck scrubbing the changing room floors manually to within an inch of their lives. But, with little regard to the outcome or the process. Your daily cleaner, who is used to running a mop around, is probably not the right person to be attempting a deep clean.
Take my business as an example: I can show you countless examples of successful, transformative deep cleans. But I can’t show you any examples of us doing average-to-poor daily cleaning (because we don’t do it).
Your daily cleaning company might talk a good game about deep cleaning. Though, if they are so good at it, why are outsourced clubs across the sector not noticeably cleaner?
When should I start?
Remember you absolutely cannot leave this to the last minute. Any specialist cleaning company worth its salt will be incredibly busy in June and July (not just in the leisure sector). You should be starting this process now, however you want to do it.
If your club was deep cleaned effectively next week, it wouldn’t get dirty again before you reopen. Better to get it done and then you know that’s one thing ticked off your long to do list.
I've decided to outsource my deep cleaning. How should I choose a supplier?
Every man and his dog seem to be purporting to offer “Coronavirus deep clean and disinfection” services.
I’d advise you to carefully consider the following factors.
1) Can the company prove that it has a long successful history of deep cleaning leisure facilities? There is a huge difference between a poolside (where you need to consider pool contamination as well as the unique contamination on / in floors) and cleaning an office.
2) Does the contractor have any relevant partnerships or accreditations? Are they known, liked and trusted by industry bodies or other authoritative third parties?
3) What evidence exists that risk management is a core competency of the contractor? We’re not just cleaning for aesthetics here; we are cleaning for safety too. Do they have accreditations? Do they have experience working with risk management focused professionals such as insurance companies, insurance brokers, lawyers etc?
4) What disinfection / sanitisation method are they using? Countless companies have been offering” COVID-19 sanitisation” but only undertaking “Ghostbusters” fogging. Without a thorough, effective deep clean, this is, frankly, a bit of a waste of time from an infection control perspective. It also doesn’t alleviate concerns members will have about cleanliness standards and aesthetics.
5) Is their pricing model realistic? If you consider how long it would take you to physically to a deep clean to high standard and then to successfully disinfect surfaces, you might be surprised at the hours required. A typical wet facility would need six people for six days, in our experience. No doubt companies will be offering to clean and disinfect that size of a club for £2,000+VAT. You therefore know before they’ve even started that they simply won’t be able to deliver what you need. (£2,000 divided by minimum wage plus National Insurance is 199 hours (so 6 people for only 4 days) not allowing for any materials, equipment, PPE or profit.
6) Can they provide recent case studies and references? You should ensure to get variety of up to date, relevant references.
IF YOU’D LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CLEANLINESS & HYGIENE AND THE LEISURE SECTOR’S RELAUNCH FROM LOCKDOWN, PLEASE VISIT WWW.SLIPSAFETY.CO.UK/LEISURE-CORONAVIRUS-RELAUNCH/
Christian Harris
Founder
Slip Safety Services
charris@slipsafety.co.uk
