Meet the Team – Housekeeping Supervisors from our Facilities Department - Birmingham Women’s Hospital

Housekeeping Supervisors BWH We are the Housekeeping Supervisors at our Women’s Hospital. As a team, we support each other along with all our colleagues in the department. No two days are the same, we multi-task throughout each day and address and resolve issues that arise during our day-to-day operations.

Our days vary between providing hands-on cleaning, ordering supplies and changing curtains to deep cleans on behalf of infection control, completing audits and managing the staff performance levels. To do our role you must have the stamina to handle the physical demands of the job and the flexibility to work various shifts. The needs of the service can be and have been challenging over the past few years due to the pandemic.

The teamwork between ourselves is a crucial part of ensuring we uphold our cleanliness standards. We pride ourselves on listening and communicating with each other and our colleagues. We look to continually improve within ourselves and the end user.

Our role is to ensure that operations run smoothly and efficiently. We pride ourselves on the relationships that we have built over the years with our NHS colleagues and our housekeeping colleagues along with our management team.

Between the four of us, we have 52 years of experience. We started work at BWH as housekeepers ourselves gaining valuable skills and knowledge enabling us to progress further in our careers. As a team, we continue to progress further with the ever-changing service requirements, learning new skills to ensure that the team we manage have the tools and confidence to move forward.

A summary of our role and responsibilities includes:

  • Scheduling shifts and arranging replacements in case of absence
  • Supporting team members to help improve performance levels
  • Inspecting and monitoring cleaning standards ensuring that the cleanliness standards are met working closely with our colleagues from Estates, Ward Managers, and Infection Control
  • Encouraging and motivating team members to always provide 100% or to the best of their ability. We oversee staff on a daily basis, provide Induction and training to new housekeeping staff
  • Take corrective actions when necessary if standards are below our expectations
  • We assign duties accordingly whilst continually inspecting all cleaning aspects to make sure all outputs meet the cleanliness standards required

The Supervisor Team are:

Lindsey Turner, Susan Taylor, Susan McCann, Vicki Davies