Double Your Workforce with the Use of Robotic Floor Scrubbers – Facility Management Guide

As technology keeps growing faster than ever, in 2023 autonomous robots are no longer just part of Industrial sites but active contributors to our daily lives. These days there is no industry that has not considered some sort of autonomous solution for achieving higher productivity or quality. Facility management companies and building service contractors are no exception in this quest.

Currently, there are over 54,000 players competing in the global cleaning and facility services market. Facing severe competition, all the cleaning and facility services companies are looking for various solutions to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

The major challenges that cleaning industry players face are labor shortages and high employee turnover. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the turnover rate for the janitorial and building cleaning services industry was 102% in 2020. The cleaning job, although important and highly appreciated by most, is not very glamorous and workers sometimes do it on a temporary basis in between other jobs. This can make it a struggle to keep staff. What’s more, the current labor market is very tight.

In this article, you will learn how autonomous cleaning machines, specifically robotic floor scrubbers, can address these challenges by enhancing the productivity of your current employees without causing more pressure or stress and providing more stimulating circumstances, so workers do not leave their jobs easily and stay loyal for a much longer period.

Enhance the Productivity of Your Current Employees

First, let’s dispel the common fear that robots should replace humans. In fact, autonomous floor scrubbers are specifically designed not to replace people but enhance their productivity. Working in tandem with a robotic floor scrubber, an employee can devote his time to tasks that require human attention while the scrubber takes care of the repetitive floor cleaning.

By repurposing your existing workers you can focus their efforts i.e. on those duties that require a person to perform such as cleaning windows, stocking, emptying trash, filling dispensers,  cleaning sanitary places and more facility maintenance tasks.

Let’s take an example!

On average a facility cleaner spends a lot of the available time taking care of the floors (vacuuming, dust mopping, sweeping, scrubbing) and allocates the remaining time on other tasks (cleaning sanitary facilities, filling dispensers, high-touch areas, emptying trash cans, removing fingerprints, window cleaning, etc.).

If we assume that an average worker would perform floor cleaning at the “real-life” speed of an automatic floor scrubber machine, however, the speed of manual cleaning is usually slower than that, it would take approximately 4 hours and 2 employees to clean a 4,000sq.m area.

1. First, they have to remove the small-sized dry debris (paperclips, sand, pieces of paper, dust, hairs, etc.) by dry dust mopping or sweeping the floor manually with dust mops/brooms.
2. Second, they have to use a walk-behind hard floor scrubber dryer to remove the stains, fine dust, and poles, and reduce the number of bacteria and fungus that might be present.

Now let’s see what will happen if we implement 2 autonomous floor scrubbers to this scenario  with the current assumed conditions.

1. It will take 2.6 to 3 hours for the first robot to dust the floor clean and about 10 min for the operator to replace the saturated dust-mop during the cleaning process (usually it needs to be done every hour).
2. Meanwhile, the second autonomous scrubber can wet clean (scrub & dry) the floor following the same route. Wet cleaning will be done in about 4 hours with a short charging time in between.

Changing the dust mops 3 times will take about 30 minutes, and cleaning the robot afterward takes the same as a traditional machine.

This results in extra 7.5 hours (8 hours minus 0,5 hours for changing the dust mop) for your workers to perform other tasks rather than manual floor cleaning, or 7.5 hours of balance savings each day. If we time it to 250 days a year, in 5 years you will save 4,375 working hours.

Of course, no rights can be taken from this user case, but the indications are extremely strong!

By implementing autonomous scrubbers, you can free your current workforce from mopping and scrubbing the floor and allocate them to other cleaning tasks. This will allow your team to perform with double productivity over the same period of time.

Create a Better Working Environment for Your Current Employees to Reduce Turnover

As mentioned above, robotic automation can take on repetitive and mundane tasks, freeing up employees to focus on more meaningful and engaging work. When employees feel like they are making a valuable contribution to the company, they are more likely to be engaged and motivated.

At the same time, when companies implement autonomous cleaning, employees have the opportunity to learn new skills that can be used to support the technology. This can include task setting, maintenance, and troubleshooting. By providing opportunities for skill development, a company can show employees that they are invested in their growth and development.

Some tasks or environments to perform them can be dangerous or risky for employees. For example, cleaning the floors at hospital locations with a high risk of infections. Robotic automation can help reduce the risk of infection, which can help employees feel safer and more secure in their jobs.

Overall, automated cleaning can help engage employees by providing new opportunities for learning and growth, reducing tedious and dangerous tasks, and improving job satisfaction by making work more meaningful and impactful.

About Gausium

Gausium was founded by Edward Cheng in 2013 out of a passion for autonomous driving. It started as a solutions provider of SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) and integrated robotics software. Today, Gausium has become a leading company of AI-powered autonomous cleaning and service robots with more than 4,000 successful deployments in 50 countries and regions. Currently, Gausium’s products and services include commercial floor cleaning robots, indoor delivery robots and supplementary accessories like docking stations, cloud platform and application software.