Finalists for Sussex Business Award for Most Sustainable Business
We are all absolutely thrilled to be finalists for Most Sustainable Business at the Sussex Business Awards!
We’re up against some very stiff competition with wonderful Big Lemon and Burleys. But, as always, it’s a huge honour for us to even be on the shortlist amongst lots of fabulous local businesses. As a small company without a marketing budget or a PR company shouting about us, it’s fantastic to get a little exposure. I know the cleaning teams, supervisors and managers get a real thrill from our award wins and finalist places.
We’ll find out who wins at a ceremony at The Grand on 1st December. Wish us luck!
Winners! P.E.A. Award for Regional Business
Main photo © Nina Emett – FotoDocument
We are absolutely thrilled to have won the P.E.A. Award for Regional Business. The ceremony for these national awards was held at the i360. Eco-designer Oliver Heath was our host, and he presented our award. The judges said “In the Regional category, the award went to a business offering super-sustainable services in its own region. Green Mop is a professional green cleaning service for businesses of all sizes across Brighton and Hove, helping to minimise their impact on the environment.”
It was a wonderful evening. The gin was flowing, the vegan food was delicious, and the entertainment was unique. It was probably the most generous, eclectic and surprising awards event we’ve ever attended. Click here for a full list of the winners.
Oliver Heath presented us with our first ever award way back in 2008. Look at how excited I was! We were only a new company back then. How time flies! 
Here’s a video of Racheal collecting the award. She’d had a fair amount of the free gin!
Finalists for the Sussex Women in Business Award for Medium Business of the Year
We’re delighted to have made the shortlist for the Sussex Women in Business Awards! We are finalists in the category of Medium Business of the Year.
This award is for businesses with 10 – 50 employees. The criteria was to demonstrate exceptional performance, growth and market leadership. The shortlist for can be seen here.
It’s fabulous for Green Mop to be recognised for this prestigious award. There will be a glittering award ceremony on 7 October. We can’t wait!
Finalists at the P.E.A. Awards 2016
We are thrilled to be finalists at the P.E.A. Awards 2016!
Now in its sixth year, the P.E.A. (People. Environment. Achievement.) Awards is the UK’s leading sustainability awards, honouring the individuals and teams behind the products, services and businesses that are changing the face of our planet.
We are honoured to join an impressive list of organisations and individuals on the shortlist. We find out the winners at a glamorous bash at the i360 on 7 October.
We can’t wait!
Cleaner training
We promise our customers consistently high standards of cleaning, and excellent training for our hardworking cleaners is key to ensuring we meet those expectations.
Our new cleaners go through a training program which prepares them for how to do things the Green Mop way. Even cleaners who come to us with a lot of experience are trained in the same way. We also do periodical retraining and provide a Green Mop Standards and Guidelines booklet in order to maintain a consistently good performance from all our cleaning teams.
Our Service Manager, Olga, is responsible for the training and induction of all cleaning team members. She is meticulous in the training and preparation for each cleaner, and her work on the training plans and accompanying guidelines has helped us provide an excellent service with well trained staff.
Training plans include sections on health and safety, security, occupational health and customer care. There is also in-depth demonstrations and training on cleaning guidelines, product usage, colour coding and efficiency tips.
Finalist for prestigious Brighton and Hove Business Awards
Great news for us this week as we found out we are finalists in the annual Brighton and Hove Business Awards, aka The BAHBAS.
We’re shortlisted for The Green Business Award. The criteria for this award is for businesses in Brighton and Hove that have demonstrated a commitment to help the city become a greener place. Well that’s what we do! And what we’ve done since 2007.
The Green Mop team are very proud to be on the shortlist with two other fantastic green businesses. The Big Lemon, who we’ve long admired for their exceptional green credentials for bussing people around, and Recharge Cargo, who use the greenest of transportation for delivery services.
We’re glad we’re up against two other original and leading green businesses.
Thank you to the judges and BAHBAS team for including us on the shortlist, it’s a real moral booster for all the Green Moppers.
European workers
We love our European workers. 60% of our current team of Green Moppers are from Europe. Bulgarians, Spaniards, Poles, Czechs, Romanians. They are all here to work hard and improve their English.
Our British and European workers are all the same, working hard to earn a living for their families, their futures. Saving for weddings, holidays, cars, gas bills.
Here at Green Mop, we’re all in it together wherever we come from. We’re just Green Moppers. We all learn from each other. I have learned that Bulgarians are fiercely proud and respectful, Spaniards are warm and friendly and work hard, Czechs are cheery and meticulous. All of us have learned to understand Johnny Sparkles’ colourful Cockney language!
The majority of people applying to work with Green Mop are not British. If Britain is no longer part of the EU after June 23rd, I know that will make recruiting cleaning staff harder, not only for us, but for all businesses like ours. Cleaning, care, hospitality, they all benefit from European workers.
Costs for small businesses
This week, I’ve been waging my usual battle between outgoings and income for our business. Wrestling every bit value out of all that we have to spend, and gently nagging to ensure we get money into the coffers on time.
Of course, all businesses are trying to minimise costs, and rightly so. That’s what keeps them in business and secures jobs for their workforce. This puts pressure on the budget my customers (and potential customers) are prepared to set for their cleaning service.
And my team of hard-working cleaners are keen to achieve good rates of pay for their valued endeavours. Every penny they receive is earned and is important.
Having put it off for too long, I’ve starting looking into the impending doom that is the new Auto Enrolment Pension regulations. Another significant pile of admin and paperwork for all businesses to undertake. Another significant cost to all businesses.
It goes against the very ethos of our company, but the cheapest way to approach it would be to keep a worker’s hours and wages down so they don’t earn enough to reach the threshold. How is that helping anyone trying to earn a decent, fair living?
Our deadline date is later in the year, so we’ll continue to work on our numbers to make sure these regulations have little impact on our customers or our workforce.
A year in numbers – 2015
2015 has been a good year for us at Green Mop. Analysing our statistics from January to December has shown that we’ve welcomed 27 new customers of varying sizes in 2015. The additional revenue, along with our 90% customer retention rate, has added 25% to our turnover. This is great news as it continues on the amazing growth of 2014.
The pleasing thing for us is that some existing customers have added to their cleaning contracts too, by expanding into bigger premises or requiring more of our services as their own businesses grow.
This leads to more jobs and hours for our team of Green Moppers. Several of our customers have also opted to pay The Living Wage on their contracts too as we offer it as an option to each client.
The Green Mop team continue to do an excellent job. Our quality audit reports which the supervisors do on our smart phone app shows an average score in 2015 of 97%. And our customer feedback forms scored an average of 97.5% for the year.
ISO Audit
We’ve had a busy week here at Green Mop HQ as we had our annual ISO audit.
The auditor was Martin, and he was here for a day to check our processes and procedures are still worthy of the ISO certification.
It was a long day with Martin going through all aspects of our business to verify that we are meeting the required standards for our Quality, Environmental and Health & Safety management.
Luckily, he’s a lovely chap and we had a good day. We find his observations help us improve. The process a very positive one as it’s an opportunity to take a step back and look at all aspects of our service.
I’m looking forward to the results of his audit!