Good morning from Ali here at Country House Cleaning. Hope you are well and thank you for dropping by for a quick read today.
If you’ve kept up to date with all our blog posts you’ll be familiar with who we are, what we do and why we do what we do. The human touch and all from our personal experiences.
However, with this blog post I’m going to write about three different yet very important areas.
Age Discrimination and The Aging Workforce
When I made contact with CHC replying to a Facebook post for cleaners I had recently put my small business on hold. At the age of 53 I thought nothing about re-doing my CV for online job boards and was excited to see how my RAF experience from the early 90s would open loads of interview opportunities.
Very quickly the responses for jobs I was applying for began to take a particular standard form. Sorry you have not been successful with your application became a regular message I received.
Having spoken with a friend in recruitment it became clear that my age was a barrier. I was surprised as I thought such things didn’t exist. Sadly, they do within many organizations and sectors.
Fortunately, CHC came through just in the nick of time so I jumped straight in helping to take our commercial side from 3.5 hrs pw to more than that at time of writing.
Only two months ago I was speaking with a client near Hassocks who told me a friend who had retired as a CEO wanted to keep active in their 60s with work. What did they choose to do? That’s right, become a cleaner.
All things considered, it’s great to know that being a cleaner is something that anyone can do regardless of age. You just have to be good at it, prepared to do it and be fit enough to get out there on the tools.
So, if you’re one of the many now having considered having to work longer but maybe less hours or rejoining the work force in middle age like I did then the cleaning industry might just be what ticks a few boxes.
Cleaning. AI Resilient Work
Indeed, the automation of work is upon us. It’s not going away and it’s here to both stay and become more so as companies cut the costs of employing humans.
As a prime example, just think about contacting a service provider you use. First line of comms? A chat bot? There you go, there it is already in place.
Coming out of university with a degree but not finding that the jobs exist in your sector of choice at entry level? Yep, another scenario of the human being replaced by the computer. All exciting on paper but quite scary in reality. Especially when you have to work to get by.
As cleaners we use our hands just like plumbers, electricians, builders, carpenters. The list goes on and as such automizing the workforce won’t be happening anytime soon if at all.
Contributing To The Economy
And of course, we don’t just pay our taxes, but we also buy fuel, cleaning products, employ tradespeople to fix our equipment and service our vehicles. Accountants to submit our tax returns and the local storekeeper to buy our food. All combined helps to put back into the economy rather than taking out.
Thank you for reading folks. As always, a pleasure.
Ali.