Pam Magazine 4/13: A hotel housekeeper's job requires an athlete's fitness
Cleaning a hotel is roughly as demanding as playing a ball game for the whole day. The daily training regime of female marathon runner Leena Puotiniemi is lighter.
19,258 steps. The pace counter of housekeeper Seija Sauremaa, 61, has been ticking steadily throughout her Friday at work – seven and a half hours, from 9.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. With an average step of 70 centimetres, Sauremaa has covered 13.5 kilometres during her shift. A common target for those using pace counters to spur them on in improving fitness is 10,000 steps in a day.
In their recently completed thesis, physiotherapy students at Laurea University of Applied Sciences discovered that playing a ball game all day is only slightly more demanding than the work of a hotel housekeeper. The difference between a recreational ball game in your spare time and cleaning work is that you are not required to chase the ball for 6–8 hours straight. These results indicate that even cleaners in top form run the risk of being overburdened.
Sauremaa is approaching her retirement in good physical condition. The wiry five-foot tall lady is jogging on a treadmill after a six-and-a-half-hour shift, having cleaned 19 rooms in the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, but Sauremaa has no problems smiling for the photographer.
A year ago, cleaning at the Sokotel-owned hotel was outsourced to SOL. After the change in employer, the allotted time for cleaning each room was cut from 22 minutes to 17. According to Service Manager Aila Forsström of SOL, this change results from the fact that Sokotel-employed housekeepers used to clean the entire room in 22 minutes, whereas only 'normal cleaning' is included in the new 17-minute time limit. After normal cleaning, the cleaners do additional work, such as bringing extra beds, which the cleaners mark on room-specific lists.
Nevertheless, the allotted working hours are insufficient for the task, resulting in varying amounts of overtime each day. Neither is it motivating to keep 'failing' all the time. According to Sauremaa, the pace of work clearly got more hectic a few weeks ago. Now, the cleaning of 24 rooms may be required in seven and a half hours.
PAM has calculated that, at a normal pace, six hours is sufficient for approximately 15 rooms to be cleaned. At this speed, a cleaner walks at approximately 4.8 kilometres per hour. The employers with the most outrageous demands may require 30 rooms to be cleaned in six hours, which is equivalent to a running speed of 9.6 kilometres per hour.
Female marathon runner Leena Puotiniemi, 36, is shocked by the burden implied by the results of the study and PAM's calculations.
– A truly mind-blowing pace that is sure to burden even young people.
Among other accomplishments, Puotiniemi won the Finnish marathon championships in 2011. The long-distance runner reminds us that a person’s pace begins to flag at 50. She herself trains for three to four hours a day, six days a week. Puotiniemi estimates that her basic training is roughly as burdensome as the work of a hotel housekeeper. And the 9.6 kilometres per hour required by some employers is close to the marathon runner's jogging speed.
– No one can keep up that kind of pace forever, she exclaims.
– Runners usually maintain such a speed for an hour. As a several-hour exercise that includes many movements that stress the back and limbs, such speeds are highly taxing on the muscles and the skeleton.
Puotiniemi stresses the importance of straightening out and stretching one's body every now and then. Hotel housekeepers are not allowed any stretching breaks, regularly having to compromise on their other breaks as it is.
Sauremaa has little trouble lifting weights. She says that she strictly adheres to her thirty-minute unpaid lunch break, during which she eats a proper lunch.
– Only four of us at the workplace eat in the canteen any more. The others either don't take a break at all, or just have a coffee.
They use their unpaid breaks to work in order to get their tasks done within regular hours. Sauremaa is worried about a colleague who has lost a lot of weight in a short period. At Sauremaa's workplace, no one takes their paid coffee break.
Puotiniemi is incensed on behalf of cleaning workers.
– I usually do the cleaning in our family. My training week usually includes a day for rest and recuperation, which becomes quite taxing if I use it to clean our 100-square-metre home from top to bottom.
Sauremaa knows that many cleaners labouring under their deadlines have trouble achieving consistent results. Puotiniemi has similar experiences.
– No two days are the same. Sometimes running is a pleasure, sometimes a chore. You cannot keep up the same pace from one day to the next.
Sini Saaritsa and Tuomas Lehto
The work strain of various activities (MET)
Sitting quietly 1.0
Light cycling 4.0
Brisk walking at 6 km/hr 4.5
Hotel cleaning 5.3
Light ball game 6.0
The MET rating (metabolic equivalent) represents the increased energy consumption caused by muscle use compared to rest, which is represented by the value 1.0 on the scale.
Sources: Jani Petäjäsuo and Olari Retsä: The workload and ergonomics of hotel housekeeping work, in addition to Duodecim, Finnish Society of Sport Sciences and Wikipedia.
Text:: Tiina Ritala