Google “janitor shortage” and page after page of news links appears. School districts, healthcare facilities and large hospitality settings such as hotels have been struggling to hire and retain needed custodial staff in the years following the pandemic, and this worker shortage shows no signs of abating. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts 336,700 openings for janitors and building cleaners each year over the next decade, with many of those openings the result of retirements, or workers moving on to other occupations. 

 

This “crisis of cleaning” has seen many school districts resort to hiring students to perform custodial work part time, or as part of community service hours. Last year, US Medicine reported that 69% of VA facilities were severely understaffed in custodial workers in addition to numerous other critical, non-clinical roles. And according to a 2023 American Hotel & Lodging Association survey, 79 percent of U.S. hotels are experiencing staffing shortages, with 43% saying custodial hiring is their top need. 

 

With the average janitor salary just over $15 per hour (a rate that has increased only marginally since 2018), pay rate alone can explain many of these shortages, especially as other service industry jobs have been steadily raising wages to attract workers. But that’s not the whole story. Custodial work is not only relatively low paying, but also extremely labor intensive. Janitors, housekeepers and EVS staff are tasked with everything from (sometimes hazardous) waste disposal, to time-intensive floor cleaning, to dusting and polishing. And, following the pandemic, add rigorous disinfection and deep cleaning to that list. It’s a lot, and it’s no wonder that, according to one recent survey, 1 in 5 custodial workers has been injured on the job. Combine this with the fact that many janitorial workers feel “forgotten,” particularly within highly matrixed industries such as healthcare, and you have the perfect storm: high turnover, difficult recruitment, and not enough people to support the critical cleaning tasks at the heart of nearly every facility.

 

But as our world continues to develop and adopt new technology at exponential speed, there are high-tech solutions that can remove some of the burden associated with this typically low-tech form of work. Commercial floor cleaning robots have come leaps and bounds since they were first popularized several years ago. Next-generation units, like the CC1, CC3 and CC5 are designed from the ground up for autonomous operation, and natively built with the latest AMR operating systems. This is in contrast to older “kit” models, which are essentially manual floor scrubbers that have been retrofitted with an external ROS (robot operating system) that allows them to run unattended. These newer floor cleaning robots have smoother operation, better ease of movement within tight areas, enhanced ability to clean along edges, and are much smaller and more efficient than their older, bulkier counterparts. They’re also in constant communication with remote health monitoring systems and record comprehensive cleaning data to provide a real-time picture of operational efficiency.

 

Read on to discover the many benefits of automating one of the janitorial industry’s most arduous tasks—floor cleaning.

 

Floor cleaning is one of the custodial sector’s most time consuming tasks. It takes a person approximately 20 minutes to vacuum 1,000 sq ft of carpeting, and over an hour to sweep, vacuum and scrub the same amount of hard flooring (and that’s with a machine scrubber!). Consider that the average size of a commercial building in the U.S. is now 12,000 sq ft, and an entire day’s worth of labor could easily be spent just cleaning floors. But with janitorial workers so hard to come by, most facilities can’t afford to devote the entirety of one person’s time to floor cleaning. When floor cleaning is automated, valuable custodial staff can focus their time and effort on deep cleaning, surface disinfection, building maintenance and more. This is a smarter use of a limited resource. 

 

Many cleaning tasks involve repetitive movements, but none more so than floor cleaning. The hunched posture and back-and-forth movements associated with floor cleaning make custodial workers particularly susceptible to ergonomic injuries, and housekeeping staff have been found to have high rates of musculoskeletal injuries due to the physically demanding and repetitive nature of their work. When some of the biggest repetitive strain culprits (vacuuming, sweeping, mopping) can be automated, janitorial workers are able to get more variety in their work movements, reducing injury. 

 

One reason for the high rates of turnover within the EVS, housekeeping and custodial workforce is a (real or perceived) lack of opportunity for advancement. But with the introduction of technology comes plentiful opportunities for upskilling and the creation of new roles. For instance, tech-oriented custodial staff can be designated as “BoT managers,” learning how to map, maintain, troubleshoot and retrieve cleaning data from the robots. As they become more familiar with the facility’s robots, they can help train other employees, elevating their role and providing deeper job satisfaction. 

 

Data is everywhere in today’s world, and facilities of all sizes use it to optimize operations and allocate resources. But because commercial cleaning is still very analog, cleaning data is incredibly hard to come by. Even the most advanced manual floor scrubbers are only equipped with an hour meter, meaning they can record the amount of time a machine is in operation, but not much else. Autonomous floor cleaning robots are changing the game. They are capable of recording not just how long they run, but precise times of operation, exact square footage and locations cleaned, water and chemical usage, and more. This type of hard data allows for more insightful decision making while also providing hard proof of completed cleaning tasks.

 

While custodial work is the backbone of any healthy building or facility, it can feel like a thankless job. It’s physically demanding, repetitive, often hazardous, and sometimes looked down upon by others. But new commercial cleaning technology promises to deliver these valuable workers from a lot of the strain and monotony that weigh them down. After all, floor cleaning robots that operate themselves, clean around obstacles, and combine multiple functions into one effectively free human workers from one of the most repetitive and time-consuming janitorial tasks out there. Being able to automate floor cleaning, upskill and learn robot management, and focus on more detailed cleaning tasks lets custodians experience a more positive work environment—one that will hopefully encourage them to stay.

 

Are you interested in addressing gaps in your custodial operations with commercial cleaning robots? Connect with us today!