Research by Minkes (1999) at Wageningen University shows a causal relationship between the speed of work, the amount of work performed and the quality of the work carried out (productivity), versus the valuation of the work environment (including cleaning quality). It is highly relevant to know if the causal relationship between cleaning quality and productivity still applies in the current situation. An attempt was made to answer the question as to
whether it can be shown that cleaning quality has an added value for the primary process of the organization. The idea behind this is that if the cleaning quality of the office environment was better, the perception of this by employees will be more positive. When the perception of employees increase, the employee will feel better about his/her work and the environment and this will probably have a positive effect on the productivity of the employee.
The research was carried out among employees working in an office environment. There are two reasons for this. First, employees with an Office job generally work in the same office environment for a longer period of time, which ensures they are more in contact with the cleaning quality in the relevant space and are able to judge this. Secondly, the number of office jobs increase more than the total employment. The services sector has become more important in the economy so that the number of office jobs has grown relatively quickly.