global stage, a local university campus or a high-rise office building. Planning And Preparation Come First To begin the enormous task of creating a clean and hygienic environment for The Olympics or any venue or foodservice op-eration, you must consider all aspects of your cleaning program and map out your goals and objectives. First, consider any logistics to keep your facility or facilities clean. At The Winter Olympics, even though it was a quarter of the size of the London 2012 Olympic Games, it was complicated by the location of venues and Athletes’ Villages halfway up a mountain, making access for cleaning and catering staff more difficult. Catering staff needed to transport large quantities of food to these mountain loca-tions, and we worked with several smaller local and regional companies to meet these demands. As part of the planning process, it’s also important to address any key issues of cleanliness and hygiene. For example, in Russia, there are different regulations for food preparation and food safety. The kitchens had to have many “rooms” where some foods were separated, such as a bread room and an egg room. And, all staff that work in catering in Rus-sia had to show evidence of having annual inoculations against the flu and other ill-nesses. Additionally, every cleaning program needs to account for the various pressure points. At the London 2012 Olympic Games, where some caterers were serving 65,000 meals a day, we needed to consider the busiest times of the day so we were pre-pared to serve our customers and promote food safety at the same time. We also had to consider the timing of cleaning the various stadiums. Since the stadiums were packed with spectators during the day, we set up our nightshift employees to deep clean the stadiums overnight to ensure they were clean and ready for the events the follow-ing day. With any proper cleaning program, you also need to “measure” your goals and ob-jectives. The old adage, “What gets measured gets done” is very true. product recommendations to help our staff clean efficiently and effectively and employee training on how to use the products. A great partnership can help you take your business to the next level and provide many benefits from cost savings to cus-tomer satisfaction. Value People Your staff members are your greatest com-petitive advantage. At the London Olympic Games, I led a team of more than 25,000 people to de-liver the Food and Beverage, Cleaning and Waste program. These employees were my best assets. If you get the right people and lead and train them correctly, they will give your business a competitive advantage. Employees work better when they are motivated and feel valued in the work-place. Create a rewards system to recognize cleaning staff for their hard work and mo-tivate them to do a good job. We followed this rule by handing out cards to employees who were going above and beyond, and at the end of the Olympic Games, we gave out prizes to those who had the most tickets. The Impact Of Clean It’s extremely important to keep the prem-ises of your facility, whether its stadiums filled with cheering fans or a hotel prop-erty, clean and tidy. This has a huge impact on a customer’s perception of your business and their deci-sion to return. In fact, research shows that if customers think a business is clean then the percep-tion of everything else will be better. In our case, the taste of the food or the wait time in line or even the appearance of the stadium would be better. Respond To Feedback Put a mechanism in place for employee and customer feedback, and be ready to act on it. Whether it’s face-to-face interaction with customers and employees or a suggestion box, it’s important to solicit feedback and respond to it. Ultimately, you should do more of what people like and less of what they don’t like. Cleaning is a very important aspect of any venue or facility. And, through these best practices of planning and preparation, understanding the perception of clean, establishing true partnerships, valuing people and soliciting and responding to feedback, facility man-agers can reap the benefits of a successful cleaning program that leads to guest and customer satisfaction. For more lessons learned from the Olympic Games, please view my online videos. www.CMMOnline.com Image courtesy of photoshkolnik/iStock/Thinkstock Choose ‘True’ Partners Another lesson learned from my experi-ence with the Olympic Games is establish-ing partnerships with suppliers and con-tractors that add value to your business. It’s extremely important to choose part-ners who will help you and who will evolve with your business. For example, our partnership with the official supplier of cleaning products for the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games and London 2012 Olympic Games added value to our cleaning program through 27
CMM – Archives July 2014: 27
