Archives for October 2023

Sustainable Water Bottles By Made Blue

October 31, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

Made Blue Foundation is a not-for-profit charitable organisation providing clean drinking water to communities in need.

Creating better places is thirsty work. That’s why we choose to work with Made Blue Foundation, a charity on a mission to deliver clean drinking water to communities around the globe. By purchasing their sustainable water bottles, we are able to contribute to this mission.

Through the sale of sustainable products and services, Made Blue can invest in worldwide water projects that change lives. These projects generate access to clean drinking water in the places on earth where it’s needed most. This helps to create better places in a sustainable and entrepreneurial way.

Sustainable Water Bottles

We’ve been handing out some of Made Blue Foundation’s sustainable water bottles as gifts at charity events, colleague appreciation days, sustainability events, and to our valued partners.

These environmentally friendly bottles are recyclable, reusable and dishwasher safe, helping to put an end to packaged water. With more than 4kg of plastic waste avoided, this is such a brilliant alternative to the usual throwaway plastic bottle. The bottles are also made from indestructible Tritan, making them clear, sturdy and unbreakable, while making refilling easy.

Creating Better Places

In true Regular Cleaning spirit, these bottles also deliver positive social value to communities in need.

For each bottle we purchase, Made Blue provides 500 litres of clean drinking water to a community that lacks access to this. This equates to one child from a developing country having access to clean drinking water and hygiene for six months or more.

In October alone, we handed out almost 1000 charity bottles. That’s closing in on half a million litres of water donated by us on behalf of our colleagues. 771,000,000 people globally live without access to clean water.

It’s this that makes water projects like this so vital. By gifting our colleagues and partners with these sustainable bottles, we can make a real difference in people’s lives. This is such an amazing impact to see and supports our sustainable business strategy to create better places.

It’s brilliant to see organisations working together towards a better future, and we’re thrilled to be able to give these bottles out and have a positive social impact. A simple way to show our thanks, while supporting our sustainability targets and reducing the use of single-use plastic bottles.

Black History Month at Regular Cleaning

October 30, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

We’ve been looking at inspirational poems and people this Black History Month.

To celebrate Black History Month at Regular Cleaning, we’ve been sharing some inspirational poems of people throughout history. These have been showing on the TV screens in our Service Support Centre each week to highlight the importance of this month.

We’ve also been getting together to share food from different cultures as a way to celebrate. This has included some West African inspired food from Nigeria, as well as dishes from Jamaica and other Caribbean countries. We know how powerful food can be to represent different cultures and bring people together, and it was great to get our teams together over a variety of cuisines from around the world.

Black History Month lets us recognise and celebrate invaluable individuals from around the globe. A month observing courage, rich cultures and diverse communities, this is an important time to honour the struggles and triumphs of people.

At Regular Cleaning, we celebrate diversity and encourage the celebration of different cultures. We care about creating a sense of community, and somewhere that people from different backgrounds can feel included and appreciated. It’s our goal to create better places and that means spaces that are diverse and kind.

We’ve spent this month learning about some of the important messages that have come out of this rich history. This is a good time to celebrate and learn about other cultures, but also to have important conversations around race.

Let’s take a look at our inspiration poems and people from this month:

Fredrick Douglass by Robert Hayden

2. Five Haikus by Richard Wright

3. [up from the slobbery] by Harryette Mullen

4. Canary by Rita Dove

Supporting St. Mungo’s Digital Inclusion Programme

October 27, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

Sharing knowledge to better the prospects of others.

As part of our partnership with St. Mungo’s homelessness charity, we were recently invited to support their Digital Inclusion Programme at one of their Community Hubs. Here, they provide training for those in their care who are keen to learn digital skills. This includes equipping clients with the skills which most of us have learnt as technology advances

Some of our team volunteered to run an Email Workshop for the Hub, joined by some St Mungo’s facilitators. The session was a huge success, seeing several St Mungo’s clients joining and running for most of the afternoon.

The nature of these sessions means that we can interact with clients directly, with participation both online and in person.

While there were differing levels of knowledge amongst the group, it was amazing to see interaction with the session. We were thrilled to see that clients were interested in what we had been asked to teach.

Supporting our Communities

Homelessness is a complex issue, and often reading about the challenges or issues homelessness causes paints a simpler picture than reality. Meeting and hearing from clients directly in this session, we saw first hand how rewarding it is to have help them learn new skills. The success of the session and positive engagement meant that we left feeling warm and positive.

The session gave us an insight into the struggles of someone experiencing homelessness and let us understand a fraction of the challenges that clients may face in their recovery.

It was clear that St Mungo’s play a vital role in helping clients to achieve success. From providing accommodation to offering training, St Mungo’s Digital Inclusion Programme provides clients with better prospects. This can help to support clients as they prepare for the world of work, training or education.

We live and breathe our company values every day. It’s this kind of personal service that allows us to make positive impacts to society.

We care about having a positive long-term legacy. This means caring for the community, and improving livelihoods.

Pampering Event with St Mungo’s

October 24, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

We sent our volunteers to a women’s only service to host a pampering day.

We know just how important self-care is. It’s vital to take time out for wellbeing and this pampering event with St Mungo’s let us treat their clients to exactly that. We went to a women’s only accommodation service in London to host a day of relaxation with special pamper treats. The aim was to host a fun and social afternoon promoting rejuvenation and empowerment.

Everyone deserves to feel special and pampered. Our team provided a number of spa-themed treats throughout the day to create a fun atmosphere with luxurious treats. This featured a range of refreshing face masks to revitalise the skin, including cucumber, clay, and a manuka honey mask.

Our nail station let clients sit back and relax as they had their hands pampered. They enjoyed some nail shaping and painting, as well as hand masks and massages. With music playing, snacks to enjoy and soft drinks to sip on, this felt like a really special event. We wanted to recreate the feel of a salon with added spa-themed fun and socialising.

A rack of lovely clothes were donated for the clients to browse and keep if they chose to. These featured a mixture of styles and items, with casual-wear, plus some more glamorous options to choose from. Items included dresses, skirts, jackets, trousers, and tops, giving the ladies a wide selection to browse. It was brilliant to see how popular this was, with everyone choosing some items to take away with them.

Making a Difference

At Regular Cleaning, we care about making a difference in society and that means caring about the wellbeing of our communities.

The event aimed to provide a fun, social and relaxing day for those that came along. It can be so empowering to enjoy a spot of self-care, promoting wellbeing and confidence. We wanted to host a memorable day that would make every woman feel confident. It’s so important to ensure that people feel supported and cherished in their day to day life, and it’s events like this that can help to achieve this.

We received some amazing feedback from this pampering event with St Mungo’s, with clients saying how much they enjoyed the day. We’re thrilled that through our partnership we can host events like this, and we can’t wait to host another similar pamper day in the future!

Thank Your Cleaner Day 2023

October 18, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

This day recognises the hard work of those that make our business a success.

Thank Your Cleaner Day gives us the opportunity to celebrate the hard work our colleagues do to provide a consistently high quality service. We care for our colleagues every day by offering a competitive benefits package, holistic training and wellbeing support. This day lets us not only offer a token of appreciation but also provides us with the opportunity to spend time together.

This year we’ve aligned Thank Your Cleaner Day with our core family values to ensure we ‘Make a Difference’ for our colleagues. We’re taking the opportunity to explain our benefits package to our colleagues and ask for feedback on these. We hope that this shows us how colleagues are using our benefits, and how we can increase awareness of them. We’ve also taken time to listen to the challenges our colleagues face when undertaking their work. Our aim is to build strategies to support them better and make improvements where needed.

The 18th October is all about our cleaning teams who are the backbone of our business and help us to make a difference every day.

Working hard to keep the spaces we visit enjoyable, this often invisible job is crucial to maintaining healthy, inclusive and inspiring environments. Our skilled cleaning teams are onsite each day to ensure that work and living spaces are ready to use. This is sometimes outside of normal working hours so that buildings are clean, hygienic and ready to use for the next working day.

Our cleaners are trained to be confident and approachable so that they can engage with visitors to the spaces they clean. It’s this that makes our teams special and an integral part of the environments they work in. We know that our team contribute to how visitors experience these buildings.

That’s why we celebrate Thank Your Cleaner Day. We want to put the spotlight on our amazing cleaning teams, and champion the work they do.

Making a Difference – Bottle Made Blue

Our leadership team have been out and about this month, meeting and thanking our colleagues for their continued hard work.

To show our thanks, we wanted to give our cleaning colleagues a little something. This year, we’ve gifted them with a sustainable water bottle as a gesture of our appreciation.

These environmentally friendly bottles are recyclable, reusable and dishwasher safe, putting an end to packaged water. We’ve placed a flyer with a message of appreciation in each one and hope our our colleagues enjoy the gift.

In true Regular Cleaning spirit, this gift also delivers positive social value to communities in need.

For each bottle given out, Made Blue provides 500 litres of clean drinking water to a community in need. This equates to one child from a developing country having access to clean drinking water for six months or more.

With close to 1000 charity bottles gifted this Thank Your Cleaner Day, that’s closing in on half a million litres of water donated by us on behalf of our colleagues.

This makes a huge difference to communities around the globe, supporting our sustainable business strategy to create better places. A simple way to show our thanks, while supporting our sustainability targets and reducing the use of single-use plastic bottles.

Putting People First

As front line workers, our cleaners are an essential part of keeping the spaces we visit safe to use. It’s important to ensure cleaners feel appreciated and valued at work, and we hope that our gift does exactly this. Our priority is to be not only a great employer, but an employer that makes a difference. For us, this means listening, receiving feedback and making any changes needed.

This has been a great opportunity to say thank you in person and hear any feedback our colleagues might have. As a business that values a personal service and lasting relationships, we relish the opportunity to show our appreciation to our hard workers.

Thank Your Cleaner Day is celebrated worldwide, recognising the hard work that cleaners do. Our company has achieved so much as a result of our cleaners and the care they put into their work. By providing a personal service, caring about the job, and building relationships with clients, our colleagues make a difference in their job every day. We’re so proud to see our values demonstrated each day our cleaners come to work, and know it’s this that makes our business a success.

HomelessWise Training

October 10, 2023 by Lizzie Hill Leave a Comment

What is HomelessWise Training and how can you access it?

The HomelessWise Training programme from St Mungo’s provides a practical guide on how to offer help to those experiencing, or at risk of homelessness. It’s not uncommon to see people sleeping rough on the way to work and not know how to help. HomelessWise training can provide the knowledge to overcome this.

These sessions are designed to educate audiences on issues surrounding homelessness, as well as how to approach or help anyone found rough sleeping. Being able to direct people found sleeping rough to local services is an invaluable skill, leading to people receiving the help and continued support needed to come off the streets for good.

Delivered by St Mungo’s, they will teach your business how to safely support people found to be sleeping rough. These sessions help staff around the building to feel more confident to approach and engage with someone.

This not only offers invaluable support and kindness to the individual, but also helps to protect the business’ reputation. When staff feel empowered to make informed decisions about instances of homelessness near their work, this helps to protect their brand while doing something practical and empathetic to end homelessness for good.

Drawing on 50 years’ of experience in the sector, these 90 minute sessions are trainer-led, interactive and encourage discussion. The training can be face to face or online and can also include bespoke content specific to the business needs.

This bespoke content can include:

Cost of living crisis
Health and homelessness
Women: rough sleeping & recovery
Housing challenges for the LGBTQ+ community
Race and homelessness
Environmental impact on rough sleepers
The working homeless
The international aspect
Operational element relevant to a specific sector, e.g. Housing First, Employing St Mungo’s clients, Managing rough sleeping around railway stations.

Having entered a corporate partnership with St Mungo’s earlier this year, we have seen first hand the amazing work they do to support those experiencing homelessness. HomelessWise is an innovative partnership between St Mungo’s and the business community, giving individuals the knowledge they need to be a part of helping to end homelessness for good.