August 09, 2021
Use This Technology to Scale Cleaning Performance Management in Your Healthcare Facility
Healthcare facilities require a great deal of attention when it comes to cleanliness. Not only do those who clean healthcare facilities, EVS staff, require more in-depth and ongoing training, but they also need to learn how to work with patients.
EVS workers must be detail-oriented and work with a sense of urgency due to the nature of healthcare environments. Keeping patients and staff safe and healthy is one of the top priorities when it comes to cleaning healthcare facilities.
Helping EVS workers perform at optimal levels is key—and having ways to measure the work and success is essential to scaling the productivity of staff and efficiency of any healthcare facility.
EVS staff are often the first to enter rooms where highly contagious and sick patients have been cared for after the patient has been discharged or removed from the room.
Because of this, EVS workers are the first line of defense against the spread of HAIs (hospital-acquired infections) and the spread of other infectious diseases.
The cleaning they do is essential to preparing rooms for the next patient and the safety of health care workers that enter the room, but also to stop the spread of disease and infection from leaving that room.
Often, hospitals that face infection control violations struggle to get rooms cleaned in a timely and detailed manner, usually the result of poor communication from hospital management or improper training—thus optimizing the role of EVS is crucial to healthcare facility operations and functioning.
The work EVS workers do has a significant impact on the health and safety of patients and staff, as well as the scores a healthcare facility receives on HCAHPS surveys—the importance of which can mean continued funding for some hospitals.
Health Facilities Management points out that, “The cleanliness of the environment is often the first thing a patient notices when entering a hospital. That first impression may then serve as the foundation of the patient experience, which today is a recognized aspect of health care impacting HCAHPS scores, hospital margins, market share, and staff morale.”
Making sure EVS staff are aware of the importance of their role, the need for clean and safe spaces, and the impact their work has on healthcare facility functioning is crucial for hospitals and healthcare facilities.
Beyond that, EVS staff have a direct impact on patient experience and can play a crucial role in alleviating the fears of patients. EVS staff often interact with patients and learn bedside manners and how to help patients feel calm and comfortable while admitted to a hospital.
According to Health Facilities Management:
“In a study of 1,000 patients by Colleen Sweeney, R.N., called ‘The Patient Empathy Project,’ the No. 1 fear reported was infection. By providing a clean environment and reducing the risk of pathogen transmission, EVS professionals can help to mitigate this fear.”
EVS staff are often trained on how to talk to patients and families so they can help to make the overall experience better and work to reduce fear and stress.
For these reasons, EVS staffing agencies and managers must have a clear plan and set of protocols for staff so they can assess performance and scale the work of EVS professionals.
Being able to increase the productivity and efficiency of cleaning staff is essential to scale your business. The better trained, the more empowered, and the more acknowledged your staff are, the more likely you will experience less turnover, thus reducing money spent on hiring and training new staff.
So, finding ways to increase staff efficiencies and productivity is crucial to the overall level of skilled workers you can provide to your client, in the end, helping your own business to grow and succeed.
Training, cleaning plans, and recognition programs can all help you succeed at bettering your staff, but so can fleet management software, like i-SYNERGY, available on all ICE Cobotics floor equipment.
Fleet management software allows managers and end-users real-time access to the location and use of floor cleaning equipment.
This means managers who may travel between locations can track cleaning progress through an app on any wireless device, giving them more insight into the performance of their teams.
By having real-time access to machine usage, they can track who is operating the machine as well as the square footage cleaned during a shift. This can allow managers to set goals, in terms of the number of square feet that should be cleaned each day.
If goals are not met, managers can then explore any issues or obstacles that may have come up during the day with the team members, and this can allow for revising and improving cleaning plans. When goals are met, there is cause for celebration and recognition.
In addition, machine charging notifications can be sent to managers to keep track of what equipment is ready for each job, thus, if a machine is not being charged for the next shift, the manager has time to deal with the issue before it’s too late.
In the same way that alerts and notifications can help to track cleaning progress, they can be used to alert managers to any labor issues.
For example, if an alert is received that a machine has not performed its cleaning for the day, a manager can investigate what the issue is by reaching out to the team member.
If absenteeism is the issue, the problem can be resolved before it’s too late and the job goes uncompleted by sending a different team member to complete the task.
In this way, managers can stay on top of the work that needs to be completed each day, keeping clients satisfied.
Since managers can track the location of the equipment, the operators, and the progress of each machine across locations, they can then identify efficiencies that can be adapted across sites.
By tracking the time of day in use as well as the total square footage cleaned, best practices can be discovered and then trained across cleaning teams. This information can be used to construct an even more efficient cleaning plan and implemented across sites or machine locations—meaning, that cleaning teams are empowered to get the job done to the best of their ability.
With an ICE Cobotics all-inclusive subscription, managers have access to even more support through the ICE Cobotics Client Care team.
This is a team of skilled technicians and support professionals that help monitor alerts, troubleshoot remotely and work to provide the best solution possible, no matter the scenario.
In this way, you’ll keep your equipment running, reduce downtime, increase the productivity of your staff, and be on your way to scaling your cleaning business.
ICE Cobotics fleet management experts are here to help you scale cleaning performance management. Contact Us for more information.
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