What Does the OSKA Study Say about the Cleaning Sector?

OSKA is a labour demand monitoring and forecasting system that forecasts the skills and number of people required in a profession today and in the future. When planning training, it is important to rely on OSKA‘s studies to ensure that necessary trends and changes are incorporated into the training. OSKA also monitors the recommendations and proposals presented in the study, assessing whether and how they have been implemented and what impact they had.

In Estonia, population decline has slowed, primarily due to increased immigration. However, in the coming decades, the younger working-age population will decrease. The labor force will not increase.

According to the study, the property maintenance sector is characterised by the following:

• 93% of staff are women;
• a higher-than-average number are unskilled workers;
• approximately 1/3 of employees work part-time;
• the average salary is about half of the Estonian average;
• higher-than-average labour turnover;
• 51% of employees are over 55 years old;
• over 23,000 people work in the sector, accounting for at least 3.5% of Estonia’s employed population. This figure does not include hotel room service personnel, whose labor needs were analysed in a different sector;
• the sector has a significantly greater labour market need for training than there are trained individuals.

In the near future, the development of the sector will be influenced by technological advancements and, consequently, basic IT knowledge will become increasingly important:

• new buildings are becoming increasingly technological;
• service development and monitoring are taking place in online environments;
• active adoption of robots;
• people’s values are changing;
• urbanisation, leading to activities previously done independently being instead done by hired help, such as home cleaning;

Bottlenecks identified in the study that need to be addressed for the sector’s development:

• There is a shortage of professionally trained managers (including Cleaning Operations Manager, Level 5). As this is a sector with high turnover and relatively low wages, a competent manager (Cleaning Operations Manager, Level 5) is key to the success of the service. Optimising the work of cleaning service providers also becomes more important, which is only possible with competent managers.
• Due to the Biocide Act, there is a need to map which professions are affected by the professional use of biocides.

What Puhastusekspert has to offer in light of the study:

• We train cleaning operations managers, focusing on addressing present and future challenges in cleaning management. A trained cleaning operations manager is key to a successful cleaning service.
• We conduct cleaning quality controls electronically, which helps us collect and analyse data, providing excellent opportunities for decision-making in work management and development, and for increasing work efficiency. As the workforce is not growing, optimisation skills are a priority.
• We are involved in the Health Board’s working group that addresses the topic of professional biocide users. We offer training for professional biocide users.
• However, there is still a significant lack of knowledge in the sector. Puhastusekspert and its team write articles and share useful information about cleaning services.

You can familiarise yourself with the study here