10/10/2018
ENHANCE OFFICE CLEANING PROVIDES FREE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE COURSES FOR ITS STAFF
Fresh from winning the Living Wage Champion Award for Recognised Service Providers in June, Enhance Office Cleaning has further demonstrated its commitment to staff development by organising free English language classes.
Enhance is a cleaning company with clients throughout London. CEO Sandy Aird explains why helping their staff learn English is so important:
“The cleaning industry is often the first place that economic migrants in London look for work. With flexible working hours, cleaning can provide a reliable income even to those with poor English skills.”
“A relatively low pay rate however means that cleaners often have to work long, unsociable hours. This can impact on their social development, especially when it comes to learning English. They simply don’t have the time or resources to improve their language skills. Often they learn English ‘on the job’ from other non-native English speakers, but understandably their improvement is limited.”
“Last year Enhance started to run courses for its cleaners in English as a second Language (ESL). Initially our intention was to run an ‘English for cleaning’ course, but we quickly realised that their needs were far broader. So we changed the course content to include the language skills you might need to access a library, shop at a supermarket, go to a bank or visit a doctor.”
“Interestingly, the average age of people on the course is mid-forties. People who have been living in the UK for over 5 years and who are only now learning the language skills to be able to read their kids a bedtime story – in English!”
Courses last between 4 and 6 weeks and normally take place on Saturday mornings, when most cleaners have rare time off. At the end of the course, students are presented with a £25 Sainsbury’s voucher, together with information on further free-of-charge ESL courses.
“We want to give our people a start and then show them where to carry on. Once they have had a taste of regular classes they want to study more and develop themselves further. Enhance is just facilitating that as part of our commitment to developing our people.”
“The benefits to Enhance are massive.” explains Aird, “Our staff are able to communicate more easily with our clients and that improves customer service levels. Importantly, they are also safer in an emergency as they can understand key instructions and emergency commands.”
“Staff retention rates have improved and recruitment has become easier as existing employees are telling their friends about what Enhance is doing. People are keen to work for a company that can genuinely demonstrate it cares about its employees.”
“Add to this Enhance’s commitment to paying our staff the London Living Wage and we believe we are well prepared for whatever staffing issues Brexit might create.”
“Our first ever class had three people and a teacher. Class sizes have grown over the past year and last weekend we had 16 participants and two teachers at our class in Farringdon. Our staff love the classes and our clients feel good about working with Enhance. It’s a win-win situation.”
Enhance was one of the first cleaning companies to embrace the idea of a fair wage for low-paid workers in London. Over the past eight years it has consistently promoted the benefits to clients of paying the real Living Wage. The majority of Enhance’s business is within London and 96% of Enhance staff, working on client contracts, are paid the London Living Wage or higher.
