What we would do without Maid to sustain excellence Housekeeping be at work or home ????
Over past 5 years in my consulting experience, as well as in my corporate time across organisations I served, an aspect which was key in our success to whatever we did was “HOUSEKEEPING” ——-> A Place for everything and everything in its place. It all starts with Housekeeping being right, everything would follow!!
So it is natural that Housekeeping is a broad indicator as to how things are at the facility. In our EHS audits globally that we carry out, on day 1, post opening meeting we set out for a 2 hr Site tour, at that time we get an idea of what the EHS score on Day 5 would be and we auditors would exchange thoughts over Lunch. believe me 99% time the Site audit score after 79 Sections of HSE audit being marked and averaged hardly changes with in 5 points or so (more so would be higher side i.e our rating was never low) As saying goes in some cultures, if you are in a stranger’s house and want to judge the family, just check how good the wash room is?? That’s good enough!!
So how Site can go about working on housekeeping:-
- What Housekeeping is not???
So How to go about committment to improve Housekeeping:-
- Leadership Engagement:- No Program can succeed without Leadership engagement, involvement and participation. Get leadership to see things that HK is a value enabler and people protector and it is their obligation and that they be dissatisfied by state of affairs. Get resources required as identified. Always work on principle that 80% issues arises from 20% area.
- Policy:– Work an Housekeeping Policy to get committment, involvement, engagement and resource from management. Identify a champion who would be the Single point of contact for the initiative. (Person with the authority).
- Establish a program:- It can be 5″S” or 6″S” or whatever you want it called. The basic aspects involve, Sort, Set, Shine, Standardize and Sustain with Safety being thrown in as a freebee check in some places!! Go executing them in phased manner. There is no short cut.
4) Monitoring and Measurement:- No program can succeed without measurement and working course corrections through action plans. Ensure timely actions are done. Delay can cause lose faith in system and demoralization.
5) Always good to post improvements, blow your own trumpet such as Before vs After!!
As all my posts indicate, everything is about knowing and doing and not letting knowind doing gap derail programme. Good Luck.
Karthik.
6th May 2017, 1630 Hrs.
Health, Environment, Safety, Sustainability (HESS) 