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The influence of cleaning quality on employee productivity in office environments of non-commerical organizations in the Netherlands

Organizations are increasingly concentrating on the core activities of the Organization, also called the primary process. Thus, the activities that do not belong to the primary process often receive less attention. The performance of cleaning is one example. The costs incurred in the implementation of the cleaning are compared to bids from other suppliers on the market. A possible saving of costs on cleaning then seems feasible. The danger here is that a low price becomes the determining factor in choosing who can perform the cleaning operations without looking at the content of the service. This can result in a deterioration of the cleaning quality.

Research by Minkes (1999) at Wageningen University shows a causal relationship between the speed of work, the amount of work performed and the quality of the work carried out (productivity), versus the valuation of the work environment (including cleaning quality). It is highly relevant to know if the causal relationship between cleaning quality and productivity still applies in the current situation. An attempt was made to answer the question as to

whether it can be shown that cleaning quality has an added value for the primary process of the organization. The idea behind this is that if the cleaning quality of the office environment was better, the perception of this by employees will be more positive. When the perception of employees increase, the employee will feel better about his/her work and the environment and this will probably have a positive effect on the productivity of the employee.

The research was carried out among employees working in an office environment. There are two reasons for this. First, employees with an Office job generally work in the same office environment for a longer period of time, which ensures they are more in contact with the cleaning quality in the relevant space and are able to judge this. Secondly, the number of office jobs increase more than the total employment. The services sector has become more important in the economy so that the number of office jobs has grown relatively quickly.