Dignity of a Cleaner. Strategies for Destigmatisation and Professionalisation of Lower Management Staff in a Cleaning Company.

The subjects of this research are account managers employed in the UK nationwide cleaning company. The aim of the study is to examine what strategies they use to position themselves as professionals within the sector belonging to dirty jobs / 3D jobs: dirty, dangerous and demeaning (Hughes, 1951). Of particular interest is how account managers, often being promoted among cleaners, cope with the stigma traditionally associated with dirty work (Deery, Kolar, and Walsh, 2019, p. 632). It is also about achieving some balance between being invisible for the clients and achieving acceptable level of self-valuation (van Doorn, 2017). This research aims to determine whether, for account managers, cleaning meet the criterion of meaningful work and allow for maintaining the dignity of a worker (Hodson, 2001, Laaser and Karlson, 2022).

Cleaning is considered a low-skills job, while this the industry is undergoing intensive technological transformation, including digitisation. Research exams how these changes influence the self-perception of account managers as the professionals on the margins of the system (Aaron, 2023, pp. 695-696, 699).

The study examines to whether the mythologisation of key workers during the Covid-19 pandemic has become a lasting phenomenon and how it has influenced the subjective experience of the contradiction between the material and symbolic aspects of cleaners’ work (De Camargo and Whiley, 2020).

The company selected for the research employs around 2,000 people nationwide, with a management team numbering around 75. The research group consists of 57 account managers and regional managers. Qualitative data are collected in the form of recorded audio-video interviews provided online via Zoom.