Amid everything that’s happened to the world and the cleaning and maintenance industry over the last two years, it should not be forgotten that family values are important in business as well as in the home. Treating employees and customers with familiarity and empathy is a long-heralded approach to conducting operations in good faith and fostering a warm, welcoming, and inclusive environment. For Scandinavian Building Services, that ethos is rather literal, too.
The company, which started as a small janitorial company in Edmonton in 1956, was purchased by Terry and Wilda Hay in 1982. The Hays quickly set their sights beyond the Alberta city and before long, Scandinavian had established a solid presence across Western Canada, ultimately growing further east.
Today, it is a second-generation family-owned and -operated business run by Terry and Wilda’s son, President and CEO Russell Hay, and his two sisters, VP of procurement Candace Elford and VP of HR Melanie Brooks. The trio of siblings dedicate their time and their lives to maintaining their parents’ professional values of high work ethic, dedication, and respect for others.
Started from the bottom
That is easier said than done, of course. But Terry and Wilda applied those values to their own children as well as their staff and customers and, as a result, Russell and his sisters have firsthand experience of just what is needed to succeed in this industry at all levels on the ladder.
Russell Hay
Growing up, Russell and his sisters spent time working in all roles —maintenance managers, janitorial staff, mechanics — to learn important life skills while better understanding the fundamentals of the business and the industry at large.
Russell started out working with his father when he was in high school during the summers as warehouse help, then becoming an account manager and since holding virtually every operational role until he ascended to president. He describes that wide range of experience and exposure as a gift.
“You don’t realize it’s a gift at the time because it’s a hard road and a very difficult business, the janitorial industry,” Russell says. “There are so many facets to it – cleaning, maintenance, accounting, risk management, HR – and you’re only as good as what you did yesterday. There is that expectation for results every single day. My sisters and I have seen that firsthand – we all went from the ground up, and I think that has really helped us as leaders. It means we can relate and understand each division and each role, and we understand how difficult it is to be a cleaner.”
Tackling the challenges of retail and hospitality
Scandinavian Building Services provides a broad range of janitorial and facility maintenance services for a wide variety of markets, including retail, commercial, public sector, construction, and sports and entertainment facilities. The housekeeping services offered run the gamut from disinfection services and sanitization to landscaping, and so much more. Having swept across Canada over the decades, with operations now in every province and territory and in both urban and rural areas, the Hays-led company now has its sights set on opportunities in the northwestern United States.
Among their many clients are some of the biggest names in big-box retail and grocery as well as prominent leaders in the hospitality and events space, although that barely scratches the surface. Each facility poses its own particular challenges, especially in the context of many areas of Canada finally reopening with little or no restrictions after two years of limited business.
Russell notes that Scandinavian’s clients, particularly large-scale sports or event facilities or educational campuses, provide a range of challenges due to the mixed and varied nature of their operations. “You have hospitality facilities, foodservice, washroom, retail, etc. all on one site,” he says. “So many different people and businesses and challenges all in one facility. Making sure you’re hearing and listening to and working with all of these various parties takes a lot of time and effort, but it can be done with diligence and dedication.”
A refocused approach
COVID-19 has proven to be a huge challenge worldwide for just about everyone. Certainly, it has specifically impacted the janitorial industry in critical ways that could not have been adequately prepared for, no matter the plans that were in place before the pandemic.
While Scandinavian Building Services already had a thorough emergency plan, Russell explains that the company pretty much “tore up” what was “nominally” a pandemic plan. “We knew we had to create a new one for an actual pandemic,” he admits. “We certainly did that; we’re proud of the extensive plan we formed, and we gave that plan to many of our customers.”
Understanding each individual industry was important. Restaurants have a very specific set of needs, as does retail, as does hospitality. Catering to those needs with empathetically and attentively was vital for the company. “It was our job to consider the needs of each industry and what the pandemic plan needed to look like for them and to fulfill those needs for now and in the future.”
Scandinavian Building Services, Russell adds, wanted to make sure it was on the cutting edge, keeping abreast of new innovations and findings or different practices. Naturally, many basic procedures needed to be changed or enhanced. Things like high touchpoint cleaning, electrostatic spraying, and handling, to name a few, needed reinforcing, and health and wellness procedures also became vital for not only Scandinavian’s own staff but contractors, customers, and end users alike. Training was also overhauled, with the company increasing the regularity of its refresher training from monthly to several times a week in some cases.
“Ultimately,” continues Russell, “making sure our plan was a live item and we were communicating those changes to our staff and our customers was vital.” Customers were asking for more visibility of cleaning teams and increased frequency of high touchpoint cleaning to put their consumers’ minds at ease during this pandemic.
That resulted in shifts in scope of work and allocation of hours on a client-by-client basis was seen, and the company’s reporting protocols were amended – for example, QR codes were implemented in various areas of a site to be scanned by cleaners to allow for efficient confirmation and communication of disinfection.
All told, moving forward, businesses will need more visibility of all cleaning procedures and frequencies that are occurring daily on site in order to provide transparency to the customer and accountability from the provider.
Maintaining diligence and recognition
Early in spring 2022, there is cautious optimism, with most restrictions lifted and two years of knowledge behind us, that society is relatively stable again. Reopening at full capacity and moving on with life is undoubtedly a good thing at the big-picture level, but continuing the plans made and building on the lessons learned, though, will be invaluable.
Naturally, one of the most defining trends in the cleaning industry today is the increased public concern over health and the transparency and efficacy of cleaning and disinfection. “As the industry’s understanding of viral disease has progressed, so has public perception,” Russell adds. “Whereas at one time people didn’t want to see cleaning while they are in a building, it’s come 180 degrees now. People appreciate seeing cleaning for their safety. That’s unlikely to change.”
He adds that he believes the basic framework for future progression is simple, built around investment into cleaning and building and maintaining visibility for psychological satisfaction for the public. “This pandemic has affected every human being and every corner of the world. We don’t want to go through that again.”
Even though society is understanding infectious disease much better and how it is spread, it’s certainly true that the cleaning industry is held to higher standards in 2022 than it was in 2019, and heightened recognition of cleaners as the first line of defence has followed. That is perhaps one of the shining positives from such a difficult time for the cleaning industry – that their work is now acknowledged.
Russell believes that recognition will hold “for a very long time to come” and it is a core value of Scandinavian Building Services to make sure that the company’s staff, clients, and customers understand and acknowledge that work. It all ties back to that ethos of promoting family values at work – recognizing and appreciating what it takes to succeed in this industry and what we can do for our peers, and ensuring the respect is mutual and ever-present.
“Cleaners in our country are incredible in what they do every day,” he concludes. “They are exceptional, and their job can sometimes be thankless if they are not hearing appreciation. Too often in the past, cleaners have only heard the negative side of things; what hasn’t been done. I know what that feels like personally and how hard it is. One great stride the industry has made is highlighting and thanking these workers for what they do every day.”
This article first appeared in the Spring 2022 issue of FC&M.
