Member Article

County Durham cleaners host Singapore VIPs

A successful Darlington cleaning business has been sharing its experiences with high profile visitors from Singapore.

MJF Cleaning Services was approached by members of the Singaporean Government after they read about the company’s recent success at the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) People Management Awards where MJF was highly commended for its ‘Focus on Our People’ project, an on-going project to nurture staff and grow the workforce.

Tan Ying Shi and Ow Seng Fong, from Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower, spent a day at MJF to learn more about how they implement HR initiatives such as appraisals, staff newsletters, options to study for industry qualifications and the Employee Appreciation Award scheme to reward staff through incentives.

MD of MJF, Martin Ferguson, said: “The call from the Singaporean Government came out of the blue and it was a real honour to host the two representatives. We discussed common workplace issues and exchanged a number of ideas- it was amazing to meet people from a very different country but with such similar SME issues.

“It was a great opportunity to share knowledge and both parties learnt a lot from the experience. No matter where you are in the world, SMEs all share similar challenges and it was so useful to look at new ways of addressing them.”

Following the visit, Tan Ying Shi and Ow Seng Fong will take MJF’s ideas back to the Government in Singapore where they will discuss methods of implementing them into the Ministry of Manpower, the Government body responsible for overseeing working practices, skills development and employment.

MJF Cleaning Services provides a range of commercial cleaning services to companies all over the UK, recently increasing its workforce from 125 to 140 after securing new contracts.

The business works with companies such as Shepherd Construction, Narec (the New and Renewable Energy Centre) in Blyth, Darlington Council, JD Wetherspoon, Cleveland Cable and Morgan Sindall, to name a few.

Darlington entrepreneur, Martin Ferguson, established MJF Cleaning Services in 2006 whilst working as a window cleaner and, as well as daily office, commercial and specialist industrial cleaning services, MJF carries out large and small scale cleaning projects such as carpet and upholstery cleaning, window and high-level cleaning and clean-downs on construction sites ahead of handovers to clients.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Addison Associates .