Who likes a dirty restroom? The panelists of CMM’s latest webinar, Solutions to Top Restroom Challenges—Isaac Johnson, vice president at Aramark Healthcare+; Alec Fomin, director of member experience at Sage; and Uma Srivastava, executive director of KultureCity—shared the biggest challenges facing the industry when it comes to public restrooms, including implementing technology, inclusivity, and productivity.
“How do we keep them clean?” Johnson asked. “How do we keep our thumb on the pulse, understanding exactly what’s going on in those restrooms, a lot of them [that have] super high traffic? We have all different walks of life that actually enter into those restrooms.”
Unfortunately, there are no simple solutions to maintaining a restroom, a place where it’s really difficult to get credit for doing everything right.
“Very few people walk out of a restroom with feedback that’s positive,” Fomin said. “Usually if you’re getting feedback, it was about a negative experience. It’s unfortunate, but you can do 99% of the things right all the time, but that 1% really, really sticks out.”
Fomin said a massive shift has occurred in commercial real estate in the past 10 years, with offices adding amenities and experiential spaces that generate completely different traffic patterns than a typical office.
“Typical offices in New York City have been cleaned the same way for 80 years,” Fomin said. “You know there’s a porter that maybe is refilling soap during the day, and then a crew comes in at night and cleans everything. A lot of these spaces, you can’t clean that way [anymore]. It’s been a real shift for the industry here.”
Implementing IoT
To help manage restroom supply challenges, Sage implemented an Internet of Things (IoT) platform in restrooms that uses sensor technology to monitor soap, toilet paper, and paper towels. Cleaning team members will receive alerts if a unit is running low on inventory, or if a device is nearing the end of its battery life or is offline for any reason.
Sage made the decision during the COVID-19 pandemic to add smart technology based on two factors. Number one: Hygiene is the paramount expectation when someone walks into a restroom.
“They want the safest, the most hygienic experience,” Fomin explained. “The safest bathroom, the most hygienic bathroom, is frankly one that never runs out of product. So, if we can get ahead of that and always have what people need on hand to wash their hands and dry up afterward when they’re done, we’re eliminating a pain point right off the bat just from a product outage.”
The second reason Sage invested in an IoT platform is that it invested heavily in touchless technology. Sage installed automatic flushometers and switched to all automatic paper and soap dispensers.
“We always talk about trying to create a frictionless, elevated experience for our members, and that was something that they clearly identified with,” Fomin explained. “That was a big upgrade for them. It felt safer. It felt nicer. They appreciated the experience.”
However, when Sage created this frictionless experience with touchless technology, it inadvertently created a new source of friction. For example, if a battery is dead on a paper towel dispenser, it doesn’t matter if it’s stocked with paper towels. Customers still can’t get to it.
“For us, it was also an investment in making sure that we had really smart systems in place on top of the touchless technology that would keep us ahead of the curve and prevent those types of issues from happening,” Fomin said.
Additionally, Sage’s ability to leverage data from the IoT system helped the company better understand its portfolio and customer usage. “As we got smarter and smarter about using those systems to manage our facilities more efficiently, I think that’s a real feather in a cap for facilities managers to be able to use that type of information to power their workforce,” Fomin said.
Johnson agreed that smart technology can act almost as a mobile workforce, identifying when supplies are running low. Additionally, with IoT in restrooms, you can learn a lot about traffic.
“That allows us a big glimpse into the time of day that these restrooms are really being hit the hardest and allows us to [determine the] proper times to ensure that those spaces are always fresh,” Johnson explained.
When considering adding smart tech to your restroom, Johnson recommended understanding the value proposition for your space. For example, are you maintaining a large public restroom or a one-person space?
“You want to be looking at what you’re going to get out of the value for that, and also what your true staffing pattern is,” he explained. “Oftentimes, in healthcare, we’re running through these restrooms quite often. And so, it really depends on the volumes that you have and exactly where these restrooms are located. Are they in a remote location that [requires] you to have this technology installed because you can’t get to them as swiftly as other times, or are they somewhere in a high-profile place? And so, it’s really understanding your geography, seeing exactly when and where [you need smart technology] and the cost analysis with it.”
Fomin couldn’t specify an ideal time to add smart tech. Still, as a believer in technology, he advised webinar participants to talk to major players that manufacture the technology they are interested in, as well as to ask for references from similar facilities that use it.
“Start at a scale that you feel is appropriate to you,” he added. “Don’t get cornered into making a decision for your entire portfolio. If you want to try this at one facility, try it at one facility.”
Inclusivity
Next, the panelists tackled the issue of restroom accessibility. Various barriers to user experience can arise in a restroom, such as the noise of automatic dryers, the space between stalls, and the height at which the towel dispenser or sink is hung above changing tables for children and adults.
In restrooms, achieving 100% satisfaction is impossible, especially in such a sensitive space, Srivastava explained. “But, we’ll do our very best as far as addressing each of those challenges and making sure we satisfy each of those different groups,” she explained.
Srivastava gives the example of someone attending a sporting event. When walking into a restroom, she may be juggling a drink, tote bag, merchandise, and a child. “Even for neurotypical individuals, forget disabilities on a day-to-day basis, depending on the restroom, the situation, it’s tricky for us to set those down,” she explained.
Inclusive hygiene is all-encompassing, from the moment a person walks into the restroom, through their experience in that private room or stall, to them exiting the restroom. “We want to make sure that just as neurotypical individuals can flow right through that entire experience, our neurodivergent individuals, our individuals with disabilities, can also experience that,” Srivastava explained.
Inclusivity is also particularly important in the healthcare space, Johnson added. “We have so many people that enter into our doors that have these disabilities,” he explained. Noise from hand drying, lighting, heavy doors, and the placement of trash cans, including maneuverability around them, all need to be considered.
Srivastava doesn’t expect facilities to go through a 100-point checklist. “The fact that you’re thinking of it, the fact that you’re making those continuous modifications, those edits, thinking about the trash cans today, thinking about the doors the next quarter, goes to show your commitment to inclusivity,” she explained.
While there may not be a direct return on investment, restroom users do return to places they remember as easy to use and clean. “The benefit is that you’re providing that utmost, top-notch customer experience that will allow these individuals to come back,” Srivastava said.
In healthcare, facility managers must consider ratings from Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Surveys from these organizations directly ask if the restroom was accessible and met the patient’s standards.
“People would choose another healthcare facility if these things are not readily available for them when they enter into our spaces,” Johnson said. “That has a direct impact on market share, which hospital you choose, when, and where. It absolutely plays into that.”
Balancing productivity and quality
Next, panelists dove into the strategies can empower a team to do more with less and keep restrooms clean.
Fomin recommended reevaluating your cleaning tools and staying on top of what’s available. “There’s been significant advances in terms of the effectiveness of how some of these tools work,” he explained. “But a real underrated part of that also are tools that make a cleaner’s job easier, even [something as simple as] not having to bend over as far to do something. That is a very, very small investment if it means you’ve got a happier cleaner who works a little bit harder for you.”
Formin said that Sage is also very focused on avoiding waste. “We don’t check dispensers that don’t tell us they need to be checked,” Fomin said. “And because we’re using even, for example, dual-roll paper towel dispensers, we’re never replacing a roll unless it’s all the way consumed. We don’t do stub rolls. We don’t check machines that are partially depleted.”
The time facilities save by not checking dispensers can be invested in more value-added activities, such as maintaining higher-traffic or higher-visibility areas. “Just avoiding waste, carving that out of whatever you can from both a process and a product consumption standpoint, are big investments that can help ease the ongoing cost issues that we all have,” Fomin explained.
Johnson believes that one of the greatest strategies facilities or building service contractors can use to empower their cleaning teams is to seek their feedback and buy-in, whether it’s regarding a piece of technology or a strategy.
“Allowing our teammates to have input is probably one of the biggest strategies,” Johnson said. “I often say that our No. 1 client that we actually serve is our teammate. And so, we’re putting these tools, these different strategies into effect for them to use.”
For solutions to additional restroom challenges, such as air quality, grout care, stain removal, and more, watch the complete webinar below.
And be sure to register for our upcoming webinars on Improving Indoor Air Quality on Oct. 21 and Implementing Technology Into Cleaning Practices on Dec. 9.
