The email arrives on a Thursday morning, written in a formal tone. The building manager on Via Galvani writes to you stating that several residents have reported that the stairwells and communal areas showed no ‘obvious signs of recent cleaning’ at the end of last week. They have also attached the minutes of the residents’ meeting – already drafted – in which a request is made to reduce the monthly payment in proportion to the “work not carried out or carried out inadequately”.
You’ve sent the team every Tuesday and Friday as per the contract. The work is being done. But you have nothing in writing to show the manager. Not a signature confirming receipt, not a work report, not a single piece of evidence that would allow you to respond to the minutes of the meeting with anything concrete.
Why housing estates are a special case
Block of flats have a characteristic that makes them more problematic than other clients: decisions are taken collectively, and the contact person who signed the contract – the property manager – is in turn under pressure from the residents. When complaints arise, their first reaction is almost always to defend the residents, not the service provider.
The minutes of the residents’ meeting are a powerful tool. They carry almost formal weight, are signed, and are used as the basis for complaints that would otherwise be merely subjective opinions. “Mrs Marini on the third floor says the stairwells weren’t clean” is a complaint. “The residents, at the meeting, resolved that the work had not been carried out properly” is a document. And you don’t have an equivalent document from the other side.
The problem of ‘you can’t see it’
Cleaning in blocks of flats has an element of uncertainty that other sectors do not have: perceived effectiveness depends on variables beyond your control. Staircases that have just been cleaned at seven in the morning already seem less clean by seven in the evening after twenty households have passed through. But it is the judgement of the resident who sees them at seven in the evening that reaches the property manager.
You’re not just managing the quality of the work: you’re managing the perception of quality, in a context where that perception is collective and taken for granted. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do a good job of cleaning a block of flats. It means that doing the job well isn’t enough if you don’t have a way of documenting when and how it was done.
The defence that works at a block of flats’ general meeting
When the property manager sends you the minutes of a meeting, you have two options. The first is to try to convince them that their residents are mistaken – a battle you’re unlikely to win, and one that often damages the relationship. The second is to respond with precise data: the date of each job, start and finish times, duration, the cleaner on site, and their GPS location within the building.
