Mole Valley Farmers

The Brief

Mole Valley support the trades of the farming community on a national scale. Mole Valley Farmers trade with co-operative principles and have strong values in respect of the farming community. Their ethos has always been to help farming members improve productivity and profitability by offering a whole range of products and services at competitive prices. Over the years the company has grown and today operate 56 nationwide rural retail locations, comprising Mole Valley Farmers; Mole Country Stores and Farmdirect along with a direct to farm business providing feed, fertiliser and other inputs to the nation’s farmers.

Mole Valley were looking for a reliable, professional and dedicated cleaning company to drastically improve the standards and reliability for the South West locations.

These sites had been lacking in a reliable, well-managed cleaning service for some time, with a couple of sites without a cleaner since they started! Communication with the existing company was very poor and their requests, concerns and general response was severely failing. This had a clear knock-on effect to the drop in cleaning standards and management of the onsite teams.

The Solution

There were several approaches that needed immediate and gradual changes to allow the service to be improved. This was to allow a swift initial improvement and ensure the wellbeing of our staff was understood.

CleanKing introduced a site-specific cleaning schedule and a clear to understand specification. This not only helped the onsite team with the role required but also the cleint, who had clarity as to what cleaning areas were done and when.

CleanKing provided a dedicated Area Manager to the 15 Mole Valley sites, ensuring that their key role was to support these sites. The largest impact is the online audit system SiteMate, which enables the Area Manager to do monthly audits, which are done via a phone/tablet with the ability to uploads photos, comments, and documents to support the reporting. Each audit is signed off by the manager of each site, which are then emailed, to ensure quality of service.

We installed a time and attendance system that removed the old pen and paper register style format, which was sometimes a victim of abuse/falsifying. This enabled a real time understanding of who was on site, at what times, and importantly that they all left safely and securely at the end of their shifts.

A ‘Comments Book’ was left so a direct communication between the Mole Valley sites and on-site team was available – this is key to advising of any requests, security/damage concerns, events and many more. This does not let areas escalate throughout the month.

As there was a language barrier between some of the team, we also translated the site pack, employee handbooks and specification into their native language so they were not confused or worried. This small gesture has had lasting results.

Alongside the above, we have installed other measures that have had a successful outcome.

The Outcome

The “Back to Basics” approach was certainly key to the success of the changes we made. Being able to introduce innovations, specifications and working with the onsite team collectively has delivered a far improved result from the start. Mole Valley have a more reliable service, communication is swift and responsive, plus the invoicing is without errors!