ASSIGNMENT – PRINCIPLES OF MANAGEMENT

CASE STUDY

DIRTY BUSINESS, BRIGHT IDEAS: SOL CLEANING SERVICE

Enter the business playground called SOL Cleaning Service, Europe’s most admired
companies. The office explodes with color, creativity and chaos. The walls are bright red, white
and yellow. Employees walk around oddly shaped, crazily designed conference tables freely,
holding portable phones (also yellow) in their hands. This is the story of a company that’s into
the least glamorous business – industrial cleaning to be precise – that works like a high-energy,
fast paced, knowledge driven company whose employees scrub hospital floors, sweep grocery
aisles and make hotel beds.

Liisa Joronen, 52, SOL’s chairman and owner, rightly says that “life is hard, work is
hard”. Having understood this, she feels that you must be happy with yourself before you make
others happy. The mostly wildly successful company started off in January 1, 1992 with 2000
employees, 1500 customers and revenues of $35 million. The employee count is increasing at
amazing speed and so are the revenues, making it one of the most admired companies in Europe.
In Finland, and increasingly across Europe, SOL isn’t just a company. It's an icon of what it
takes to win in the new world of business. In an industry notorious for low wages, high turnover
and lousy service, SOL stands miles ahead of competition and has proved that you don't have to
be glamorous to be cutting edge. It has combined radical innovation with disciplined execution
while trying to build a dirty business from scratch. Let's examine how?

Work can be fun

Believing, that it's possible that cleaner's hard work can be made interesting; Joronen has
built SOL's culture around optimism and good cheer. It’s cleaners wear red and yellow jumpsuits
that reinforce the company's upbeat image. A yellow happy face is the company's logo which is
plastered on everything from her blazer to the company's stationery to its most important budget
reports. You find fun and freedom everywhere. There are no titles or secretaries at SOL, no
individual offices or set working hours. The company eliminated all perks and status symbols.
Most days, despite her membership in one of Finland's wealthiest families, Joronen commutes to
work on her (bright yellow) bicycle. Her mantra is simple: "Kill routine before it kills you”.

There are no low-skill jobs.

SOLs consciously tries to convert cleaners into customer-service specialists through

systematic training covering seven modules, each of which would consume four months and end
with a rigorous exam. There are many ways to skin a cat. Likewise there are innumerable ways
to polish a table or shampoo a carpet. Employees, therefore, learn about time management,
budgeting, and people skills. The whole attempt is to change mindsets, imploring them to make
use of their brains as well as their hands. By upgrading its people, SOL upgrades its business.

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Employees set own targets and aim for the sky

At SOL decentralization is a way of life. The company's supervisors work with teams to
set target, hire people and negotiate deals with customers. They set really tough, ambitious and
unrealistic goals - when allowed to do things on their own. In SOL's case employees not only set
goals but also realize them with a vengeance. Joronen says, ‘They set targets for themselves that
are higher than what you would set for them. And because they set them, they hit them.’ Across
Finland, SOL has 23 satellite studios and employees working therein make sure that they have
enough to reward themselves after recovering all expenses.

Loose organizations need tight metrics

Liisa Joronen believes in autonomy, but she's also a stickler for accountability. Employee
performance is measured along tight performance benchmarks. Once a contract is obtained, the
salesperson would visit the site and remain alongside the team that does the cleaning work.
Individual cleaners carry ‘quality passports’ that are updated monthly - reflecting their actual
performance as rated by customers from time to time. Joronen makes sure that the loose
organization is well supported by good measurements.

Great service requires cutting-edge technology

Who says a ‘low-end’ business has to be a low-tech business? Laptops and cell-phones
are standard equipment for all supervisors at SOL, freeing them to work where they want, how
they want. Inside the office (whether at SOL City or any of the 23 studios), there's almost no
room for paper. So the company stores all critical budget documents and performance reports on
its Intranet, along with training schedules, upcoming events, and company news. A sophisticated
sales database, also on the Intranet, tracks all of SOL's existing customers and high-priority
target accounts - when they were last contacted, by whom, and what promises were made. ‘We
use computers more than most computer companies,’ Joronen says. ‘Ten years ago, we couldn't
have done what we do today.’

Questions

1. What are the key management actions that help SOL to carry out their jobs with zeal,
enthusiasm and commitment?
2. Keeping SOL's case in the background, how would you help workers find satisfaction in hard
low-skilled jobs?

3. Do you think that SOL is an icon of what it takes to win in the new world of business?
Explain.

Source: Adapted from Gina Imperato's report on SOL from fastcompany.com; company website
www.sol.fi