Cleaning as therapy
The popularity of Instagram influencer and cleaning guru Mrs Hinch, and organisation expert Marie Kondo’s Netflix show are making cleaning and tidying hot topics on social media.
Sophie Hinchcliffe, aka Mrs Hinch, posts videos and cleaning tips for her many Instagram followers. She has said that her cleaning routines helped with her anxiety. Cleaning routines follow a process from start to finish, with a positive end result. The physical and the ritualistic nature of completing a task is a mindful experience, as well as a form of exercise. Concentrating on the task at hand, and achieving a gratifying outcome can be soothing, relaxing and satisfying. It’s good for the mind and body.
The KonMari Method is a tidying technique coined by Marie Kondo. Her best selling books and Netflix show focus on the premise of decluttering our homes by determining which of your possessions don’t “spark joy”.
As the world around us seems chaotic and out of control, cleaning and tidying is something we can bring order to. The social media buzz is making us stop seeing it as a chore that needs to be done, but rather a positive activity.
Merry Christmas!
Look at the lovely Christmas cards Syd has designed for us! They’ve gone out to customers this week.
A lot of staff are off over Christmas, having a well earned break. But there will still be Green Moppers working throughout the holiday period.
The office will be closed between Christmas and New Year as usual.
Have a wonderful Christmas everyone.
2018 ISO audit success
We’re delighted to have passed our 2018 ISO audit! We have achieved continued compliance for certification for:
BS EN ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System
BS EN ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System
BS OHSAS 18001:2007 Occupational Health and Safety System
Our new certificates can be viewed on our Credentials page.
The benefits of continued accreditation are enjoyed by all our customers. Any potential new customer can be reassured of our professional standards.
Thanks, as always, goes to the hard working team at Green Mop.
Welcoming and respectful employer
We had a cleaner resign this week. It’s always sad when part of our team moves on, but in this case we were heartened to read his resignation letter. He’s transgender, and it was kind of him to comment on how he valued his experience of working with Green Mop. I asked him if I could share his kind letter in a blog post in order to reassure any other trans people who might be seeking employment. He said I could. His letter included this paragraph:
“I have really enjoyed my time at Green Mop and have valued working with such welcoming and hard-working people. I would like to add that I have felt that Green Mop has offered me a safe and supportive working environment as a transgender person and would like to thank you for that. It has given me a lot of hope for future employment situations.”
He also said he’d like to add the following:
“At Green Mop I didn’t have to worry about being openly trans. In my interview, my supervisor asked for my pronouns and said if I experienced any prejudice to contact her. When showing my ID, she politely asked if I would prefer they ignore my deadname and acknowledged that changing my name is a difficult process. If anyone misgendered me, my supervisor would correct them. My employers made every effort to ensure the people I was working with were aware of my pronouns. It has given me a lot of hope for future employment knowing there are employers who respect my identity.”
I’d like to thank him for taking the time to write about our lovely team, and for helping any future trans job applicants who might be anxious about coming to meet us for the first time. We’re proud to be a welcoming and inclusive place to work for all.
Any people seeking employment with a respectful and supportive employer can complete our application form here.
Helping at the local foodbank
Earlier this year, I started volunteering once or twice a month at the Hangleton Foodbank. They do a great job helping families and individuals in need in the Hangleton, West Blatchington and Hove. We’ve now started collecting donations at our offices in Selbourne Road in Hove. Staff, friends and customers have donated food items. Green Mop donates loo rolls and washing powder too. The picture shows the most recent donation. It doesn’t have to be much as all is appreciated.
So if you want to drop any donations of food or toiletries for our local foodbank, please feel free to drop by our offices!
BICSc corporate membership renewed
Green Mop has renewed their membership of BICSc – The British Institute of Cleaning Science.
This is our trade association really, and to be a member we happily sign up to their code of practice, which can be seen on the BICSc website.
Finalist! BAHBAs 2018 Best Green Business category
We’ve done it again! We’re finalists in the Brighton and Hove Business Awards for the best Green Business award.
We’ve been finalists at the BAHBAs several times, and it’s always a really fun award to be part of. Olga has already been down to the i360 to do a little bit of filming for our category which will be played on the evening of the award ceremony.
We’re thrilled, as always, to be recognised for our eco credentials. We’re up against two other wonderful businesses with fantastic environmental ethics, so wish us luck!
GDPR readiness
All businesses have had to reassess their privacy policies and procedures in line with the new GDPR regulations coming into force in May 2018.
Green Mop has always taken privacy and data security very seriously, so we didn’t have much work to do to ensure we are compliant. We did, however, have to document all that we do. And we added a few layers of security to our IT set up to ensure all was robust.
You can see our updated Privacy Policy here.
We also documented all the Technical Measures we have in place to protect customer and staff data, added a Data Retention Policy document, and our employee handbooks were updated and reissued.
As Green Mop Ltd is a B2B company, we were not sure if our customer data was subject to the new regulations as it is about personal data. We took a decision to apply the same policies and procedures to that information as we do to any other personal info. It’s best practice anyway to not hold any information that is no longer required, but it mainly limited to contact details.
2017 ISO audit – SUCCESS!
We’re delighted to have passed our 2017 ISO audit! We have achieved continued compliance for certification for:
BS EN ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System
BS EN ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management System
BS OHSAS 18001:2007 Occupational Health and Safety System
Our new certificates can be viewed on our Credentials page.
The benefits of continued accreditation are enjoyed by all our customers. Any potential new customer can be reassured of our professional standards.
Thanks, as always, goes to the hard working team at Green Mop.
Christmas office hours
Our Green Moppers are working across the holiday period, some even on Christmas day! So spare a thought for those that don’t get any time off or prefer not to as they are away from their families.
The office will be closing at lunch time on 22 December. Between then and 2 Jan, we’ll be checking messages and emails regularly.
All back to normal from 2 January.
Merry Christmas!