The Prestige Group, South Africa’s largest specialist cleaning company, has its sights set on becoming a complete one-stop-shop for facilities management. CEO Johan Du Toit explains to Gay Sutton how good people management is a key element of the company’s success.
Over the past 20 years, a revolution has been happening in the boardrooms of companies small and large. The engagement of cleaning services—once the preoccupation of the middle and lower management tiers—is increasingly being taken into the boardroom, where strategic management and decision making can deliver significant value. Not only does a clean office or facility improve the image of a company, it plays an important role in improving health and safety, and can increase the lifespan of buildings, equipment and furnishings. Additionally, for sectors such as hospitality, healthcare and food processing, it is essential for regulatory compliance. One company that has led the migration from middle management inconvenience to strategic corporate value is the Prestige Group, South Africa’s largest specialist cleaning company.
Launched in 1969 and headquartered in Randburg, northern Johannesburg, Prestige employs over 50,000 staff, runs 45 offices across South Africa and provides specialist cleaning services to a wide range of sectors including retail, education, industrial and mining, healthcare, hospitality and the food industry. Alongside this, the company has been expanding into related services through a series of strategic acquisitions. For example, within the healthcare sector, it can provide staff and services such as CSSD packing, laundry and linen services. Through its First in Staffing Solutions business, it can provide contract staff for the hospitality sector, while Edge Performance Management delivers training. And its most recent acquisition—a company called NICE—hires out portable toilets for events and construction companies. Cleaning services, however, remain the core company business.
Managing such a diverse range of services across a large country presents its challenges, and over the years the company has developed a decentralised management structure consisting of seven divisions, each with its own managing director. Five of the divisions are regional and ensure that all clients receive a personal service and a quick response; one division manages the specialist healthcare and hospitality operations; while the seventh is the support centre which delivers corporate support services such as payroll, training and procurement.
People are central to Prestige’s operations and the company manages a comprehensive scheme for staff selection, training and development. This happens not only at shop floor level, but also applies to management.
“It’s very important for us to select industry leaders and specialists for our management posts,” explains CEO Johan Du Toit. “Most business negotiations today are done with financial directors, so having managers who talk in corporate language makes a big difference, especially in food hygiene, healthcare and hospitality. We also do a lot to provide our managers with the opportunity to advance their careers.
“We currently have over 1,200 senior and middle management employees on formal learning programmes, including NQF (National Qualification Framework) levels III and IV,” he continues. One such programme is a ten-month management development course. “It begins with five days at a development centre in the Veldt, where they are analysed under pressure. When they come back, a personal development programme is worked out for that person, which includes one-to-one coaching.”
A business can only ever be as good as the staff who deliver the service; and for Prestige, this is the cleaners. New staff are given a five day induction at their regional training centres, and are then sent out into the field with existing cleaners on a buddy system. However, their skills levels and training needs are continuously monitored, and cleaners are provided with ongoing training to NQF levels I and II.
“We have a large training department, with training facilities in each of the regions, and our regional training managers are responsible for analysing and delivering the training needs for the region,” Du Toit explains. The content of the training is individually tailored to the knowledge and skill requirements of the job, and to address any issues on individual contracts.
Staff are reviewed on a monthly basis using the balanced scorecard method, and this is then linked in two directions: firstly to the training programme, and secondly to an incentive scheme that annually provides an overseas holiday for the best performing individuals. “We’ve been doing this for four years, and it’s made a big impact on morale and performance. We publish the results of the analysis quarterly so everyone knows where they are, and whether they need to put in extra effort to win the trip.”
Although cleaners have never been high earners, Prestige has always recognised good performance at each contract location, and top achievers are invited to an annual regional achievers awards ceremony where their accomplishments are recognised.
“We’ve also introduced a Supporter Club,” Du Toit continues. A questionnaire is circulated between all staff, and this provides the company with feedback on company performance in 12 key areas. “The feedback shows that generally people are happy and content. And this gives them a vehicle to voice their opinions or their needs on the shop floor, which we can then address per contract.”
Quality of service is vital to Prestige’s continuing development. Not only does each operational manager monitor standards, but on larger contracts, customer relations managers with responsibility to corporate head office also make regular inspections and obtain feedback from the clients regarding satisfaction levels and issues.
Suppliers also play a key role in the company’s success. Prestige partners with a number of international and local suppliers, each of them supplying specialised equipment and materials for the entire group. “And here, I would emphasise the word partnership,” asserts Du Toit. “We don’t change suppliers because someone else is faster and cheaper. Our suppliers have to meet rigorous quality, cost efficiency, pricing and environmental requirements, and they need to be innovative and specialist in those things,” he says. “And while we do our own research into new cleaning methods, our suppliers also keep us abreast of the latest developments, presenting new products and chemicals equipment.”
Du Toit’s vision for the future of the company is to expand on the range of additional services that it can provide. “We already have four years’ experience in this: in hospitality we can provide executive housekeepers, bar staff and porters and in healthcare we can provide nurses, theatre staff and so on. I see Prestige becoming a one-stop-shop for a whole cluster of services. We are currently looking at a variety of functions in the mining sector which might be suitable for acquisition. And we aim to do this in each of our sector areas,” he concludes.
