Shaun Orchard, commercial manager at Fluid Hygiene, explains why Alister Gregson should win the Leader of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
A quantity surveyor in the mid-eighties, Alister began his career within the construction industry in the London area. During the recession of the 90s, Alister teamed up with an old college friend and entered the world of contract cleaning.
Alister’s subsequent drive and determination has developed Fluid Hygiene become a successful nationwide business that services the UK’s leading hospitality and leisure industry, particularly bar and restaurant chains.
The company now employs over 800 people who are on target to clean 1000 well-known high street establishments every day by the summer of 2016.
Alister’s approachable and innovative management style has breathed fresh air into the dusty world of commercial cleaning that is traditionally renowned for high staff turnover, low wages and low aspiration.
Despite our increasing success he continues to personally support the recognition and training of our team and maintains a focus on personalised customer service. As a result, we continue to maintain a rare high staff retention rate in our industry at all levels. Our eight mangers have achieved a combined 91 years with the company.
Most noticeably we have never had so many female managers, actively driving our operations team. There are very few managing director’s in our business to whom both staff and clients remain loyal for such a significant period.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
