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L&A visits London’s W hotel

During a recent London trip Liz had the opportunity to catch up with Lisa Williams – the Director of Style for W Hotel in Leicester Square in London. Liz and Lisa first in New Zealand, while Liz was on assignment at Langham Hotel Auckland and Lisa was the Executive Housekeeper.

Lisa took a moment out of her busy schedule to show Liz around the 192 bedroom property which opened in 2010.

Like all Starwood “W” hotels – this property is very trendy – luxury mixed with innovative style and it is right in the centre of Leicester Square – the entertainment hub of central London.

Lisa has a team of Room Stylists (Room Attendants) who make up rooms along with her team of Style Talent Coaches (Supervisors) to keep the property in tip top condition.

A Style Talent Coach (Housekeeping Supervisor) is a part of Housekeeping department or Style as they call it in the W lingo. A Style Talent Coach reports to the Style Manager.

The Style Talent Coach (Housekeeping Supervisor) assists in maintaining a high standard of cleanliness throughout the Hotel by being aware of ‘Talent needs’ to be able to delight guests.

W Hotel London – Bedroom

W Hotel London

Lycette & Associates receives Grand Tour of The Arch Hotel at Marble Arch London

One of the great plusses about the hospitality industry is the ability to work in other parts of the world. With L&A I travel far and wide to deliver our housekeeping workshops and conduct operational reviews for housekeeping departments. It is always a great pleasure if I can catch up with past colleagues and fellow housekeeping experts. This time I am in London to run a Housekeeping Development Programme as well as presenting at the UKHA Share Knowledge Day.

Last week I was fortunate to catch up with Grant Powell, fellow Antipodean and General Manager of the Arch Hotel in Marble Arch London. I was invited to visit the property and received the Grand Tour.

Executive Housekeeper Gitana proudly showed me throughout the 82 roomed boutique style property. It was designed by RDD Interior Architectural Design and was inspired by the London landmark, Marble Arch, and the local neighborhood. The Hotel spans seven Grade II listed townhouses and two mews homes encompassing approximately 55,000 square feet.

The Georgian buildings that make up The Arch London, were originally built as residential homes during the 18^th Century. During the Blitz of WWII, a cluster of bombs bisected Bryanston Square, damaging almost all of the buildings on Great Cumberland Place, including those of The Arch London. After the war, the buildings continued as private dwellings, until they were converted into two hotels, in 1975. AB Hotels purchased the buildings in September 2001, when The Arch London’s story began.

The rooms have been carefully designed including the great purpose built minibar area and compact bathrooms.

Which cleaning method is best for my carpet?

Carpet cleaning trainer and consultant Colin Nation,  explains how to best look after our carpets and what cleaning methods to use.

Here he goes again. He is going to tell us to put down that sandwich while he tells us gruesome stories about groobely things that live on our carpet or crawl about on our furniture and infect our lungs with horrible microorganisms that inhabit the soiling in our indoor environment.  Maybe , Maybe not.

Before you decide on a carpet cleaner to clean your carpet, or maybe you have your own carpet cleaning equipment and look after it yourself, I will explain some things that will help you keep them looking great and performing well and keeping the look you paid for as long as possible.

In my role as a carpet cleaning trainer and consultant, I often get asked, “Which method of cleaning is best for my carpet?”  Unfortunately there is no clear answer. A lot can depend on the style of carpet, the fibre content of the pile, the method of installation, the soiling type that the carpet is subject to and what you normally do to maintain it.

Let’s start with soiling. What is soil? Soil is pretty much anything unwanted in the carpet that is removable with cleaning. Stains are the colours and dyes that are not removable with normal cleaning. So in effect there are really only 3 types of soils and the rest are stains. (The stains we will consider in a future article.)

Soil type 1. Dry particulate soil. Depending on the building and its location, this generally consists of sand, grit, leaf litter, clothing fibres, loose carpet fibres, human skin flakes and hair. This also  includes mould, bacteria and dust mite and similar microorganisms that feed of the dead plant and animal matter in the soiling and these can make us sick.

How do you remove this dry particulate soil? With a decent vacuum cleaner of course. If you have barrel, bucket or back-pack vacuum cleaners then you will also need a turbo or power agitator head to go with it if you want to get out as much soil as possible. My preference is a duel motor up-right vacuum. They are safer and much easier to use and far more effective than a suction only machine.  Make sure you have HEPA filters on any vacuum cleaner to prevent re-cycling of ultra fine particles.

Soil type 2. Water soluble soils. This generally consists of sugars, salts and starches and other water soluble soils that can include mucous from sneezing and coughing and residues of beverages. If you can drink it then it is most likely water soluble.

How do you remove water soluble soils? One way is to wait for it to dry out and turn to dry soils and vacuum it out. The big problem is that most water soluble soils are also Hygroscopic, which means they will absorb moisture from the air. In a humid environment, such as a bar area of a hotel, or anywhere North of the Queensland border, the moisture levels in the air are enough to continually keep the soil moist and sticky. Sticky soils don’t vacuum up. The alternative is to rinse it out with water with the hot water extraction process (Steam Cleaning as many will know it by.)

Soil type 3. Fats and oils. Oils from car parks, pollution and cooking fumes are the three main sources of oils, but sweaty bare feet and food spills can also be a contributor. It’s the oily type soils that tend to glue the fine dust particles to the fibres. This is why vacuuming can remove some soils and still leave the carpet looking grey or dull because the dust sticks to the sticky soils. .

How do you remove oily soils? This is where you need a detergent. A detergent dissolves the oils and turns them into a soluble state which can then be removed by a variety of cleaning methods. We will explore those shortly.

I have been in the carpet cleaning industry for over thirty years and have seen lots of changes to carpet and upholstery manufacture, cleaning methods and believe it or not, even the types of soiling that we are finding. As an example, if we wanted to eat something exotic 30 years ago we went to a Chinese restaurant, but nowadays these are hard to find among the rows of restaurants with wonderful cuisines from all corners of the world. With the exception of some liqueurs, soft drinks were the only beverages that come in colours other than red, green, brown or amber.  Thirty years ago the pollution in our air contained lead and other things that have all but disappeared and modern cars don’t tend to drip as much oil all over the road. Soiling has changed and so has the cleaning chemistry and methods.

In the Australian / New Zealand Standard 3733 Textile Floor Coverings – Cleaning and Maintenance of Residential and Commercial Carpeting, there are 5 basic methods of carpet cleaning recognised. I thought it might help to explain these and how they work.

Thirty years ago Hot Water Extraction was the newest and greatest cleaning method available for carpet. It was erroneously called “Steam cleaning” but it did not use steam. It was merely hot water sprayed under pressure and vacuumed out. When the hot water hit the air it created some water vapour which people thought looked like steam, hence the name. Steam is actually invisible and it is also dry, so it is not great at cleaning, so hot water is used to flush out the soiling after detergent is pre-applied to the carpet to dissolve the soiling. This method has the potential to remove most soiling from a carpet, if the operator is good enough, and has been well trained, and has a lot of experience, and uses the right detergents, in the right quantities, and is given sufficient time to thoroughly extract the rinse water. It is a great method for cleaning a heavily soiled carpet, but can take longer to dry than other methods.

Then along came so called “Carpet Dry Cleaning”. This method is not dry. It uses water in the cleaning process so cannot truly be called “Dry Cleaning”. True dry cleaning uses petrochemical solvents (Perchlorethelene) and this must be contained within a sealed environment otherwise probably  no one in a building would survive the release of the volatile solvents.  It is now referred to as Rotary Bonnet Cleaning. There are still some franchises that promote this method. A detergent is applied to the carpet and then an absorbent bonnet is placed under a floor polishing machine and spun over the surface of the carpet to absorb the soil. The advantage of this system is that the carpet dries fairly quickly to get a room back in service in a hurry, the disadvantage is that it is limited in the amount of soil it can remove, so you usually have to do it more often.

There are a number of ‘dry powder’ cleaning systems available and these can provide some solutions where a very fast dry is required.  A detergent or solvent saturated powder is sprinkled on to the carpet with a fertiliser spreader or the like and it is brushed in with a scrubbing machine and allowed to dry and absorb soils into the powder which is then vacuumed away. The advantage is that it dries very quickly, but it struggles to achieve a result on very heavily soiled carpet. It is great as a maintenance system to keep a carpet looking good if you apply the system very frequently.

There is also a “Dry Foam” method.  A machine whips up a detergent foam and this foam is brushed through the carpet and immediately picked up in the vacuum container. A de-foaming chemical is used to kill off the foam in the collection tank. It has fairly limited soil removal ability and tended to cause a lot of re-soiling due to the nature of the old detergents and so it had to be used frequently to achieve a constant good appearance. It was not great in a high humid environment.  I haven’t even seen a dry foam machine in the last 20 years or so.

The oldest method of cleaning carpet was the ‘wet foam’ Shampoo method. A floor scrubber is used to apply detergent through a drip feed system from a tank mounted on the machine. The detergent is then whipped up into a foam in the carpet and the foam is then vacuumed off using a wet pick up vacuum cleaner. This was a fairly messy system and again, many of the old detergents caused rapid re-soiling. This is because the detergents dried out to a dried out detergent. When there was any humidity around, the detergent residue simply remoistened and became sticky and attracted even more soiling. The foaming detergents were difficult to remove from the carpet. Thirty years down the track and I still hear some people say “Don’t get your carpets cleaned because they will only get dirty more quickly”.

But how times have changed. We now have Workplace Health and Safety issues to consider along with ‘Sustainability’. I believe these have been a good thing. Most cleaning product manufacturers have eliminated the nasty solvents from their formulas and have replaced them with more environmentally friendly and safer alternatives making them safer to use for the operator and the environment.

Some have made significant advances in the surfactant technology and have come up with ‘Encapsulation’ technology for the cleaning agents.  This has meant resurgence in the popularity of the old wet foam method. We now call this “Encapsulation cleaning” and it is revolutionising the cleaning of carpet.

Essentially “Encap” cleaning,  as it is known, is similar to the old wet foam method, but only in the type of machine required to apply the cleaning solution. The liquid encapsulation solution is applied through a drip feed into the brush or pad system and is agitated into the pile of the carpet. The soil is released into the foam and within seconds it seems to disappear leaving the carpet looking clean. You need less solution and they dry much faster than the older formulas. “But where does the dirt go?”I hear you ask. Good question. The soil is actually still there, you just don’t see it any more. Oily soils and fats are dissolved in the cleaning solution which then dries into a microscopic brittle crystal. Over the next few regular vacuums, the soil filled crystals are easily removed. It’s like turning sticky soils into dry particle soils that no longer stick to the fibres.

A true encapsulation product is non-hygroscopic and won’t pick up moisture from the air like the old shampoos do. This eliminates the re-soiling. It’s funny, but when I first heard of this Encapsulation system I thought “What a load of rot. Nothing will beat the hot water extraction method for cleaning”. But now I am convinced that it is a viable alternative that has many advantages. There is very little noise which is great for hotels and motels where we don’t want to disturb guests. There is much less water and chemical use than other methods. There is no liquid waste to dispose of so it’s great for the environment. It’s fast, easy to use and easy to learn, it makes the carpet look great and there is no rapid re-soiling. It dries quickly so you can get the rooms back in use quickly. Another advantage is the machinery is relatively inexpensive.

If your carpets are fairly heavily soiled, you still can’t beat a good thorough clean with the hot water extraction by an experienced professional carpet cleaner, especially a WoolSafe Approved Service Provider. You can find one at www.woolsafe.com.au .  The WoolSafe Organisation is an independent testing body for chemistry for use on wool carpet and the WoolSafe technicians are especially trained , experienced operators who have years of experience.

If you have your own staff who do carpet cleaning, why not consider contacting Col Nation info@nationtraining.com.au and have your cleaning staff learn the best way to care for your carpet and fine furnishings.

This article was first published in The Executive Housekeeper Magazine Vol 16 No3

About Colin Nation:
Col Nation is a 30 year veteran in the carpet maintenance industry. He operates ABBsolve Services, a specialty stain removal and carpet cleaning consulting service on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland Australia. As a WoolSafe Registered Inspector, Colin helps carpet owners and manufacturers solve many types of issues relating to carpet maintenance. With this experience behind him he passes on this information and experience through the Daniels Associates of Australasia a Registered Training Organisation that specialises in the cleaning, healthcare and hospitality industries. Colin also operates Nation Training that trains carpet cleaners for the WoolSafe Organisation in Australia and New Zealand that. Colin can be contacted through info@nationtraining.com.au or colnation@abbsolve.com.au

Strategies for Enhancing Your Team’s Cohesion

When it comes to team building at the office, many managers try to avoid the topic because it often takes a lot of time and effort. When it comes down to it, however, the benefits of having a high-functioning team cannot be overstated: increased trust, enhanced performance and productivity, more job satisfaction, staff retention and an overall sense of community are just some of the advantages.

When you add all this together, what you get is a cohesive bunch of people working in sync towards the same goal, with a marked absence of frustration, resentment, suspicion, avoidance of accountability, lack of respect, and all those things that make people hate going to work.

So just because you have staff members, it doesn’t automatically mean you have a team. The following are some of the ways you can improve communication and enjoy a more motivated, engaged and cohesive team.

Communicate with your staff

Be clear with your staff about the purpose of their work, expectations and common goals. You can easily achieve this by having regular office meetings and coming up with a mission statement for your office that encourages a team mentality. By not communicating with employees, you increase the risk of misunderstanding, assumptions, apathy and lack of loyalty.

Commit to staff development

Savvy business leaders are always putting resources towards the continued education of their staff members, and helping to develop their skills that will enhance their value to the team. Sending your staff (and yourself) to seminars on communication, emotional intelligence, team building and leadership training are worthwhile as well. Remember to follow up on these courses by giving staff your ongoing support by ensuring employees use their new skills, encouraging them to be proactive, and implementing effective new policies.

Offer feedback

Your staff members should always know where they stand with respect to your company, and by providing them with both casual and formal evaluation you will effectively be showing them that they’re valued, respected and that their work is acknowledged. Many business owners make the mistake of only providing feedback when it’s negative, but providing plenty of positive feedback will build the confidence of your staff members and will make it more effective when you do need to criticise.

Encourage collaboration

Every office needs some collaboration among staff members in order to make the work happen, but there are plenty of benefits to making that collaboration more effective. By creating a space where employees can get to know each other — even if they don’t work closely that often — then you will create a space that is more comfortable and that encourages more creative thinking and brainstorming. Having staff members that know each other and that work well together means that better work will get done more quickly, and more innovation will come of it.

Be consistent

No matter how many staff members you have, it’s important that you try to be consistent in your decision-making. Having strong office policies means you don’t “play favourites” and you treat each employee the same, which will make them all feel more valued. Communicate decisions clearly and openly so that everyone knows them at the same time, and handle similar situations involving staff members the same way every time so that each employee knows they are as important.

Strong teams don’t just appear magically, as you have to work hard to improve communication and respect amongst your staff members. If you really work at it, don’t be surprised if you start noticing positive changes quickly.

About Timothy Millett
Timothy Millett is an Australian-based Trainer with global hotel industry experience. In addition to a portfolio which includes the Sofitel Hotels, Taj Group, Wolgan Valley Resort & Spa and Hilton, he has also held strategic learning and development positions such as Director of Training for Moevenpick Gastronomy International and Group Training Manager for the prestigious Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. Now, as the Director of Training & Development for i perform, Timothy and his team continue to work closely with the hotel industry to enhance performance in leadership, sales and service through blended training, service auditing and coaching solutions. Learn how i perform can help you by contacting Timothy or any of the i perform team about your learning needs on www.iperform.com.au or by calling 02 9025 3513.

December Update from the Global Soap Project

Meet Ruth, a young mother living in rural Malawi.  Her family, like most in her area, earns less than $1 per day growing crops of corn and selling or trading what they can to meet the basic needs for the family. When I visited Ruth recently, I learned that she wasn’t unfamiliar with soap.  However, like so many people living in poverty, Ruth had never been taught why soap and proper hygiene are so important for maintaining good health, so her family wasn’t buying it or using it.  As a result, she and her children were sick quite frequently.

                                        

Update from the Global Soap Project!

The Global Soup Project was founded in 2009, and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the Global Soap Project receives partially-used soap from over 1,000 hotels across North America, recycles it into new bars of soap, and distributes them to disaster victims, refugees, and children and mothers living in extreme poverty.  To-date, GSP has sent recycled soap, along with hygiene education, to thousands of people in 23 countries, and each week GSP produces 30,000 new bars of soap to go to people who need them most.

AGM for PEHN 24 October 2012

The Professional Executive Housekeeper’s Network’s Annual General Meeting will be held on Wednesday 24^th October 2012, 4:30 -6:30 pm. at William Angliss Institute of Tafe, 555 La Trobe Street, Melbourne.  Registration starts at 4.30pm and the meeting will commence at 5.00pm sharp.

If you would like to attend, please Email : pehn.aus@gmail.com with your RSVP or send to P.O. BOX 200 Market Street, South Melbourne 3205

For details of the AGM Notice, Agenda, Nomination and Proxy Form email pehn.aus@gmail.com

For your reference current committee members are below:

President                    :  Marian Stratford

Vice President           :  Margaret Fernandes

Treasurer                    :  Jocelyn Ng

Secretary                     :  Rashmi Tulsiani/Danielle Keller – both Resigned

Committee                  :  Lynabel Carreon

Committee                  :  Karen Bingham

Committee                  :  Meena Tamang

Committee                  :  Val Harding

Committee                  :  Melisa Starbuck

Committee                  : Jenny Trimboli

Committee                  : Christina Pak

Please note only financial members are permitted to vote on any issues raised.  Please forward any issues you would like to raise latest by October 15 2012 for inclusion on the agenda and also indicating your attendance by completing the attached forms

We look forward to seeing you there!

Best Regards

PEHN Committee

Liz’s 3-month London 2012 Olympic/Paralympic event

Not long after the London Olympics were over, the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games began. The Opening Ceremony took place on August 29 and the games ran for the next eleven days, until the Closing Ceremony on September 9. Around 4,200 athletes, each with some form of physical or intellectual disability, competed in 503 events covering 21 sports. Around 150 countries sent athletes to compete in the London Paralympics, and over 1,000,000 seating tickets were sold.

This is where Liz was involved for the last 3 months; she worked through ILuka for BP at the Olympics and then Paralympics as Team and Ops Manager for the One Day Programme. It was very diverse, extremely busy, long working hours but most of all incredibly inspiring!

Paralympics are now done and dusted, what an amazing job and what amazing people!

Liz hopes to be involved again in 2016.

Felicity Shankar (Iluka Managing Director) and Tiffany Broome Iluka Programme Director Client Services at Para Opening Ceremony

Fancy dress With Jonny Ruddy, Venue Overlay Manager at Olympics wrap-up party

BP Team 2012 training day

Team Iluka

Fancy dress wrap up party

BP Team 2012

Paralympics athletics in the stadium - crowd of 80,000 +

WIN! One free admission to the online course: Finance for Housekeeping Managers

To all housekeepers around the world! For only 6 days L&A is offering 1 person FREE ADMISSION to its online Finance for Housekeepers course . For your chance to win and start this course on Monday 22 October with fellow housekeepers from around the world register your name, position, hotel and email address with Josephine. Email her your details and your name will go in the draw. Email josephine@lycetteandassociates.com
The winner will be notified by email.

More information about the course:
This self-directed course enables Housekeeping Manager’s to think critically and become more financially savvy. The focus is on practical skills for the workplace, expanding and developing professional confidence. The course is facilitated, clear and simple learning via the internet – scheduled over 8 weeks and over approximately 20 hours:

• downloadable on-the-job tools and templates
• interactive forums with global peers
• case studies and practical work exercises
• assessments evaluated by the facilitator and returned with individual feedback
• awards for successful participants with a L&A certificate or within Australia, a Statement of Attainment

SEQPHA Drinks and Nibbles 5 October 2012

SEQPHA invites its members and non-members to join for drinks & nibbles at the Hyatt Sanctuary Cove on Friday the 5th October 2012.

Looking forward to catch up: Under the Bali Hut, by the lagoon pool at 5.30 pm. Cost: $30 per person

RSVP Mel 21st September on melissa@corporatedesigns.com.au or call mobile: 0466 915 341