Success Stories

[box type=”shadow” ]Women have been widely accepted as natural and successful entrepreneurs when it involves the business of facility services. Some have crossed over Rs 100 crore mark while some have taken their operations beyond the borders of India. Coinciding with the International Women’s Day 2018, Clean India Journal brings to you the success stories of two self-made women into facility services.[/box]

Housekeeping, cleaning or facility services, though considered a “common job”, is one of the most challenging among the many challenging jobs, be it for a man or a woman. However, when it comes to women, the perspectives and equations get altered in the market dynamics in which they operate. Facility services, as such, in its manifold bifurcation – from cleaning to IFM – calls for diverse roles in terms of the extent of services offered and the quality. Jyoti Nair, Associate Director-Operation, GSH (India) Pvt. Ltd, who has contributed to facility services in different roles – housekeeping to operations and even entrepreneurship – started her journey in 1985.

Journey

An IHM-Chennai graduate, Jyoti Nair’s experience in housekeeping began in the hospitality industry with The Oberoi Grand- Kolkata, followed by Hyatt Regency-Delhi. Taking a break in the 90s was inevitable with two children in tow. This break also kindled the entrepreneur in Jyoti, who ventured to home catering service for bachelors and the elderly. Back into action in 2002, she rose up to become the executive housekeeper of Harsha Park Inn, Bangalore.

The tryst with facility management began with Sodexo, then Sasken, then Atkins and since 2014 at GSH, Karnataka. “At Atkins, which was a new entry in the India market, it was my responsibility to put in place all processes and systems. For close to four years, I managed both technical and soft services.

“I also explored into training given the vast experience in the hospitality industry before joining GSH. Today, I still do take some part-time training, which keeps me up-to-date. Today, as an Associate Director of Operations, Karnataka, I manage key accounts of Flipkart Warehouses and Bosch. The services include Integrated Sustainable Facilities management spanning across the South and Western parts of India.”

Challenges

What might seem a peaceful journey is never so when it comes to dealing with manpower in the facility services or for that matter any service industry. Today, where the service industry faces a severe crunch of skilled manpower, it is inevitable to stop staff from jump the wall even if it for a few bucks more. “Attrition is a challenge in our industry. It is easy for employees to shift at a moment’s notice, and even harder to find their replacements.”

Another major challenge posing facility services is with clients forcing service providers and vendors to work on reduced margins. It is this reduced margin that has created an imbalance in the facility service industry with very big companies acquiring the smaller ones who are victims of margins. “In the facilities industry, reducing the margins is close to an impossible task given the cost of manpower and materials. It’s like the old saying – you can’t expect quality work with a cheap budget.

“Given the rising cost of manpower and materials, we can only reduce the cost by 5%. Anything above that will involve lower quality of work provided, which is against my policies. Manpower is affected the most if you sign a contract at low margins.”

Good, Bad, Ugly

Subcontracting in large projects is unavoidable. Most IFM companies engage subcontractors but here again there is squeeze on margins. “Good as it leaves the client to focus on their core competencies. Bad as the manpower does not have a sense of belonging and the IFM company ends up being a manpower supplier. Ugly if the IFM company is treated as a manpower supplier and not a company which adds value.

Accomplishments

Speaking of her achievements, the awards below spell the successes.

Won the Golden plaque at the Sodexo SMART Conference Nov’2003 as the Best Unit Manager; Qualified as an Internal Lead Quality Auditor at Sasken and Atkins; Successful ERT training in Emergency rescue and first aid; Qualified ISO 14001 Lead Auditor. Certified by BSI; Special Recognition award at the 2010 Bangalore Value Awards at Atkins; Six Sigma Green Belt; 2007-2008 LRQA Integrated Management Systems Internal Auditor; Lead Auditor ISO 14001 2005; and PGcFM from IFMA 2005-2006.

Partner or Vendor

“Some of the software and manufacturing industries like Akamai and Bosch where the IFM company is considered a partner and not a vendor makes all the difference. The staff are taken care of by extending the canteen and rewarded periodically. The CSR activities include giving the children of the employees scholarships. In some companies the waste paper is recycled into notebooks and distributed.”

[box type=”shadow” ]Working in an FM company at the operations level is definitely not the same as running your own business or the new concept of home cleaning. Shagun Singh Baruah runs a home and commercial space cleaning and renovation business in Delhi NCR and Bangalore. She calls it the Homework. Homework is a part of the parent company AM Services 24×7 Pvt. Ltd and has about 1000 employees of which approximately 60 staff to currently work on Homework.

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Being an entrepreneur is hard but being one in this country is possibly harder. Despite of all the hardships it’s has been very rewarding. The backbone of the business is her courageous father who gave her will and determination on the table and “A never give in” attitude. Homework’s real success is attributed more to her father than anyone else.

“I have met so many interesting women in these years and through their inputs and encouragement, I have been able to continually add value to our service delivery. It’s also been such an eye opener to work with and amongst blue collar personnel. There is so much to learn from them every day and it’s wonderful to see so many of them have the desire to learn and grow with us over the years.”

Journey

“Homework came about just for that reason. ‘My woman Friday’, as I like to refer to her, still just couldn’t understand why I won’t allow her to douse my bathroom with buckets of water. I realised that my pain was the pain of a lot of other women. Gurgaon has a lot of expensive real estate and the already high levels of dust and hard water make it hard to keep things looking clean and neat all the time. And that’s how and where we started.”

What started out as just a cleaning service, went on to become a one stop shop for all home services. “Today, we have been able to build a trust in the market and people are more than willing to give us bigger jobs other than cleaning, like painting of their homes, woodwork and other odd jobs around the house.”

Wide range of services offered include Interior & exterior painting; making modular kitchens; wardrobes and other furniture; electrical, plumbing and masonry services; complete turn key services including civil work; marble floor polishing; Deep cleaning of full homes, offices and other commercial establishments; bathroom cleaning, kitchen cleaning, sofa and carpet shampoo; and pest control, termite treatment and pigeon netting services.

The materials and equipment used are different as per the jobs at hand. Diversey and Taski for are used for cleaning.

Challenges

In this business, every day is a new day. One is dealing with people on all fronts — be it your employees or the client. No one solution fits all problems. “First and foremost, getting manpower to understand what sort of cleaning we wanted to deliver in itself was a challenge.

Also, as we went along, we had to improvise and change our process. However, once a process was taught to the employees and the older they get in the system it’s difficult to get them to accept the change easily.

“Secondly getting older employees to train and share knowledge with new employees is not always easy. Once they feel they are skilled, they are not always ready and willing to share that skill. Thus, changing the way, they think about things was a challenge.

“My father and I believe very strongly that great attitude is a key to success and drilling that into our teams to agree with our philosophy hasn’t been easy. One would think politics exist only in the white-collar jobs but they are everywhere and more so amongst the labour and dealing with that is a challenge that we wake up to each day. And managing people at all these levels and keeping the peace is an uphill task.

“From the customer perspective, educating them on what our service delivery and what our promise is has sometimes been a struggle.”

Approach

“We have a simple methodology — no work is too difficult, and nothing is impossible. And we always believe in being positive and saying “YES” is where it all starts for the customer. Also, we are very transparent with our existing and potential customers. Our pricing is always available on line for people to see. We have open lines of communication with our clients and we never shy away from a problem or from accepting a mistake. We also make huge efforts to deliver projects back to clients in time and try and keep any inconvenience to them at the minimum.”