ADDING MORE CLEANERS NOT THE ANSWER TO CLEANLINESS - A STUDY ON MANPOWER PRODUCTIVITY AND ADOPTION OF SMART TECHNOLOGIES IN SINGAPORE'S HIGH USAGE ENCLOSED SPACES

Abstract

Perpetually plagued by many issues that affects productivity such as manpower shortages, the cleaning industry is struggling to keep up with the rising demands of our “cleaned” city. Hence, the Smart Nation Initiative incepted in 2014 to boost productivity by encouraging businesses to adopt smart technologies. However, it seems that operators of the high usage enclosed spaces such as cinema, buses, trains, train station and bus interchange face with barriers to do so and continue to be reliant on manpower. This study seeks to conclude that manpower productivity at high usage enclosed spaces is low when benchmarked against National Environment Agency’s (NEA) standards. Furthermore, it also aims to address the struggles of manual cleaning and barriers causing low adoption of smart technologies. Another area of study understands the current strategies employed and implement improvements or future strategies. To achieve this, qualitative methods such as exploratory research and interview were employed to obtain knowledge as well as fill in research gaps. In order to derive manpower productivity, data gathered from interview was computed using NEA’s productivity calculator and analysed quantitatively. The findings concluded that manpower productivity in majority spaces were “less productive”. Moreover, struggles such as working in unconducive environment and barriers arising from high cost and space constraints due to existing design were uncovered. Based on these findings, brief recommendations were provided to overcome these issues. Lastly, the study concluded by validating the hypotheses and objectives. Limitations such as limited sample size were identified.