In recent weeks Spotless, now owned by Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) and Spotless management, has undergone a radical re-structure with concomitant personnel changes. The organisation is now going to market by ‘tailoring services to market sectors’.
‘Under the leadership of CEO Bruce Dixon, swift steps have been taken to push decision-making and responsibility down into the business. This change in front line responsibility puts customers’ interests first and foremost,’ states Spotless’s September 2012 Fact Sheet.
Following the company’s mid-August privatisation, incoming CEO Bruce Dixon flagged a clean out of the organisation’s ‘bloated cost base’. In an article written by Richard Gluyas in The Australian business pages (22 August), Dixon pointed to the company’s “extremely heavy” overheads.
Spotless says that with a market sector structure, clients will have one Spotless management contact. ‘This single source of contact will be available if clients require a single food, cleaning or maintenance service or more integrated package which can contain 30 or more services.’
The company, which has been a specific IR target of United Voice, continues to emphasise that, ‘Unlike competitors who wholly outsource to external sub-contractors, Spotless draws staff from direct employees and tradespeople.’
Among the executives who have left Spotless in recent weeks is Julianne Page, who was group general manager cleaning services.
The general managers of each recently determined industry sector are health/aged Care, Steve McIntyre; education, Donna Freer; leisure, sports and entertainment, Ian Delmenico; resources, Duncan Wilson; business and industry, Dana Nelson; airports, Jason Kuner; government, Craig Sutherland; defence, David McKaskill; and laundries, Paul Waterson.
Each sector is supported by a national support team lead by Tim Sexton.
Spotless has an annual revenue of some $2.8 billion, operations in 30 countries, and 40,000 staff delivering 30 million service hours a year.
The Spotless board comprises three PEP executives being Anthony Kerwick, Rob Koczkar and Geoff Hutchinson; Bruce Dixon and chief financial officer Josef (Joe) Czyzewski.
Dixon served as managing director of Healthscope, Australia’s largest provider of integrated healthcare services, from 1997 to 2010. Prior to Healthscope, he was a long serving senior executive of Spotless, having held the positions of GM Spotless Healthcare, and GM Servicemaster of Australasia.