unskilled housekeeping workers.
The hospital saves money by us-
Vital Signs
HOLIER THAN
THOU. . .AND
MORE PROFITABLE:
CLEANING UP ON
HOSPITAL HOUSE-
KEEPING
The heads of this organization
provide individual instruction to
hospital housekeepers on the most
efficient cleaning methods. They
work side by side with the clean-
ing staff, where topics such as the
hospital's latest advances in open-
heart surgery are discussed-and
all during work time. Said Peter
K. Read, director of operations at
St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland,
"Before, these people looked at
their work as the dirtiest job in
the hospital. Now they talk about
how their work relates to the
patient."
The organization responsible
for these innovations is not a pro-
gressive union, not a radical health
collective, not even a company
where a liberal personnel manager
is interested in humanizing menial
labor. It is ServiceMaster Indus-
tries Inc., a thoroughly capitalist
company that is making a bundle
helping hospitals cut their house-
keeping costs. Going against the
trend of many management con-
sultant firms that contract to run
entire hospitals, the Chicago-based
ServiceMaster specializes in house-
keeping. Its supervisors and in-
structors manage the hospital's
ing the less expensive supplies and
equipment produced by Service-
Master, and by getting the em-
ployees to work more efficiently.
ServiceMaster is growing ra-
pidly, and currently has opera-
tions in 742 hospitals which ge-
nerated revenues of $275 mil-
lion in 1978-triple the level of
five years ago. But, according
to the February 19th Business
Week, what sets ServiceMaster
apart from its rivals is not so
much its growth as its explicit-
ly religious orientation. Its cor-
porate goals are "to honor God
in all we do, to help people de-
velop, to pursue* excellence, to
grow profitably." In a strange
place, perhaps, but nevertheless
an explicit statement of the ca-
pitalist variant of "people be-
fore profits" credo.
It should be noted that Bu-
siness Week quoted no workers
in their story so the correlation
between promise and perfor-
mance is not clear. But it defi-
nitely appears that ServiceMas-
ter is trying to do something
right. According to Alexander
Bale, Jr., vice-president for de-
velopment, "Our willingness to
roll up our sleeves and be part
of the process communicates
to people that they are import-
ant and there is value (in their
jobs)." This non-eltist ap-
proach-superficial though it
may be-probably looks a lot
better to many workers 'than
the attitudes typically display-
ed by their hospital bosses. But
it may backfire when-and if-
hospital employees begin ask-
ing why profits are necessary at
all.
Source: Business Week, 2/
19/79.