Do you know what’s in the products you use every day? If so, you’re probably in the minority. In 2023, ISSA conducted 54 in-person workshops offering practical tips on cleaning for health, training 893 industry professionals. Most — 90 percent — could not recall one ingredient in a cleaning product they use at work.

This lack of knowledge worries Dr Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, senior director of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC), a division of ISSA. During one of the most popular panels at this year’s ISSA Cleaning & Hygiene Expo, he highlighted the gap between what cleaning professionals think they know and how little they actually understand.

“They’ll say to you, ‘I know how that product works, I know why it works, I know how to use it safely, and I know how to screw up your floor and mess up your table if I use that product incorrectly’,” Macgregor-Skinner said.

However, this understanding rarely goes below the surface.

“The first question I say to people is: ‘What product do you use?’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, the blue one, the green one or the orange one’.”

In addition to having implications for health and safety, this lack of deeper knowledge affects the broader reputation of the cleaning industry.

“The problem with us being professional and being considered as tradespeople is that we don’t understand what makes our clean products work and how they work, and that’s different to what electricians promise, because they know their stuff,” Macgregor-Skinner said.

Fellow panellist Stuart Nicol, director of Quipment, gave an example of inappropriate chemical use, which he said was becoming a significant issue.

“A shopping centre in Sydney used to pour 20 litres of chlorine into a scrubber to clean tiles every day, and then they wondered why those tiles were brown a week later because they weren’t rinsing it off,” Nicol said. 

“It was a simple case of no one clearly identifying what the floor surface was and how to best clean it. A lot of damage was done.”

Debbie Walker, marketing manager for Diversey ANZ, said she had seen similar issues with cleaning companies using chlorine alongside microfibre cloths, without understanding that the chemical would damage the fabric of the cloth. Consulting with suppliers and manufacturers for expert knowledge would help avoid these situations.

“There are lots of experts out there and your cleaning and hygiene providers are very knowledgeable, especially the global ones,” Walker said. “Consult with them, talk to them, tell them what it is you’re trying to achieve, what sort of facility you have, what your constraints are.”

Lack of experience at a management level is a key part of the problem. Nicol said that while the Australian cleaning industry has evolved and become more professional, this can mean people at the top of businesses don’t always have ground-floor expertise.

“Once upon a time, every manager of every cleaning company worked on the floor before they worked in management,” Nicol said. 

“Now we have a lot of management coming from university or trade backgrounds who are managing people, not managing cleaning as such.”

At the same time, budget cuts mean cleaning staff don’t always have access to essential training courses.

“We once had a complete training regime every month with a new supplier coming in and making sure we knew what products were and how to sell things,” Nicol said.  “That very rarely happens these days, because nobody’s got the time or the budget.”

Only 13 percent of respondents to the 2023 ISSA survey said they had received any training in the previous year. But Macgregor-Skinner said cleaning professionals shouldn’t feel it is their responsibility alone to do the hard work of finding out what’s in their products. Experts and management need to take a more active role and develop formalised training and education programs.

“I think within our industry right now, there’s too much emphasis on you guys to learn stuff, and it’s too hard,” Macgregor-Skinner said. 

“We’re not driving you personally, in your personal career development, in a way that’s strong enough to give you the knowledge — and it’s not a lot of knowledge — that transfers to skills and abilities, that allows you to use those products safely.”

Photo by Crystal de Passillé-Chabot on Unsplash