Leading from the front

TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS

Another huge issue for front-line operatives is in feeling isolated from the organisations that employ them. For Chapman, this is where technological innovation can play a positive role. SBFM’s award winning system Optimise-AI picked up the 2024 i-FM Technology in FM Award for its ability to use SBFM data to help answer day-to-day questions from its 7,000 staff.

This people-centric approach goes to the heart of his philosophy and has helped create a community of workers, who, coming from multi-ethnic backgrounds may not be good English speakers. Developing the system, SBFM’s CTO Ricky Majer allowed for the fact that for many of the staff, there is not only the physical barrier of being based in different locations from their managers, but a language barrier as well. Optimise-AI is designed to be multi-lingual, so users can type in a question in any language and it won’t just give them an answer in their chosen language, but is shown in English as well, which helps non-English speakers improve their skills.

Says Chapman: “Psychologically it also helps alleviate the pressure on cleaners as the reality is they’re probably not going to hear from their manager every single day, so if they need a quick-fire answer to something like ‘can I book my holiday?’ they can do that via AI so are not left just waiting for a call back.”

This may certainly help to address the isolation felt by many front-line workers. Other innovations in the firm’s technological toolbox aim to help counter the difficulties many cleaners reported in the ‘hidden figures’ report of having to travel miles to some jobs.

Says Chapman: “Our dashboard tells me where the shift is and we can measure the average distance people might go which is 10 kilometres. And we also can add in an extra payment to cover a shift further away, and even tell them the bus route. It means we have a metric of how far a person needs to travel.

“Alongside this, when someone leaves we use a telecoms organisation model to ask ‘why are you leaving, and can we persuade you to stay?’ If the answer is still no the third strand is ‘why don’t you keep in touch?’

“In this way we’ve amassed within this industry a 100,000-person database of people who worked for us who had a good experience. This means if a person does not turn up to their shift the system pushes it out to people based in that area and based on their star rating, their safe to work status, previous attendance and reliable audit scores, it then alerts them of a potential shift.

“This is cost effective because the client is getting the shift covered, and the system will also find out why the original person did not turn up in the first place, and it provides extra income for the attendee, so everybody wins.”

FUTURE PLANS

While around 90 per cent of SBFM’s services are in cleaning the company has expanded into providing other services over the years, particularly in security, waste management, catering and pest control as clients who’ve been impressed with the firm and the tech proposition have asked for the delivery of other soft services.

Says Chapman: “Despite the fact we’re an emerging company we get asked, ‘can you do our cleaning, catering and security?’ It’s because they like the personality and the feel of the business, the ethical approach to the supply chain and the data aggregation that is our tech.

“For the future we’re looking at more positive collaborations, for instance client BrewDog wanted to work with us as a partner and supplier. Because they wanted to do something different, they have put our logo on their cleaning equipment as part of their DNA. Now because their consumers all love the BrewDog brand, they want to purchase a BrewDog vacuum cleaner.

“Alongside this we will continue developing our technology and help our front-line colleagues feel they can achieve anything they want to, by matching the competition with innovations that make a positive impact on this sector.”