Alyssa Marie Cabanero
De La Salle University
Pia Manalastas
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“Maintaining the integrity of our employees is critical in our business, and our company is built on trust.”
When Kristine Anne Sumira, Heidilyn Cabanero, and Arabelle Adigue established Maid911, it was an observation of the trend of the booming construction industry, particularly with condominium developments. Taking advantage of that market, the three of them launched their business in November 2011 with the vision to offer professional cleaning services. As corporate working women, they empathize with those who juggle keeping a safe and clean home with their busy work schedules. They learned of their trade on their own, allowing them to have first-hand experience of what it means to run their business from the ground up and establish standards of cleaning from their own experiences and their staff’s experience. The growing demand for their service gave them the prospect to add more people – turning to poor communities and creating learning and hiring opportunities.
Fast forward to the present year, the eleven-year business they established grew to much more than their initial vision while keeping true to their core organizational values.
What greets us on the homepage when we book with Maid911 is this: Booking a cleaning service with us means cleaning your home and changing someone else's life. By availing of our cleaning services, you also get to help our Cleaning Ladies achieve their dreams, goals, and aspirations in life.
"We wanted to be responsible citizens as well as business owners by providing jobs and a means of sustenance with underserved communities," shares Heidi. "We want our homeowners and clients to be satisfied with the Maid911 experience while providing a work environment where our employees take pride in their work and have the dignity of labor."
The organization specifically targeted poor communities in the metro and partnered with them to help provide a livelihood. They reached out to poor communities and conducted a series of free housekeeping training for a hundred people. This, in turn, allowed Maid911 to receive applicants from those training and hire them in the process.
Maid911 supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all by offering training and employment for those with fewer prospects. Maid911 opens its doors, partners with willing individuals from communities to learn a trade for decent employment, and provides employment opportunities for them. Their cleaning ladies are sent to further accredited training not only to improve their service but also to expand their knowledge base. The company's efforts on job creation also support the UN SDG goals by promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all, particularly in the "achievement of full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value."
An Interview with the women of Maid911
“Barely a year since we started, we were able to close a deal with a big cosmetic company, and we were tasked with cleaning their boutiques in the malls in Metro Manila,” says Kristine. “When our contract with the cosmetic company was coming to an end in 2016, we were able to close another large account with an embassy. Those were special times because, as a result of those contracts, we became more aggressive in recruiting employees. We tried reaching out to poor communities to help provide a livelihood.”
That community was GAWAD KALINGA, where they went to various communities (some even as far as N. Caloocan – a city in the far north of the Metro) to share their hands-on knowledge of cleaning and housekeeping. What began as a three-person organization where Arabelle, Kristine, and Heidi did everything themselves has transformed into a fully empowered business. As the business grew, the three of them made sure to keep to the mission to help out in communities, especially women who have few job opportunities.
Their well-held principles, as well as their organization’s beliefs, played a big part in ensuring that any challenges posed by the business were offset by their desire to stay true to their company's core values: Excellence – providing high-quality service; Integrity – delivering service while ensuring we protect the sense of security of the clients; Responsibility – acting with integrity towards staff, customers, community, and environment; Caring – creating an environment for clients and staff that they feel their welfare is protected; and Innovation – efficient use of time and equipment, and the use of technology to deliver quality service.
Of course, Maid911 benefits from its tenacity in upholding its core values. Testimonials on their page manifest clients’ satisfaction with their high-quality service. Yet, being in a business is not without its challenges. The all-women team has had its ups and downs, especially during the pandemic. The company slowly picked up its feet again as the city transitioned into the new normal. They’ve discovered from their own experiences in cleaning condominiums and boutiques and learned even more from interacting with their staff over the years.
Maid911 would not be a successful business without a lot of learning, especially with their time in the industry. When asked what the most interesting lesson they’ve gathered from training and employing their staff from these underserved communities was, Heidi shared that mostly their staff had a different mindset from their own. “Particularly in underprivileged communities, we have learned a variety of lessons about recruiting staff. We have observed that these people tend to have a short-term mindset and are present-oriented. We made adjustments and paid some employees on a daily basis.”
This particular attention and malasakit (concern) they have towards their staff seeped into the kind of culture that their company advocates: a culture of trust and responsibility.
Heidi and Kristine share in our discussion that it was not enough to simply run the business with what they know from their years working within a corporate setup – they have had to adapt to the changing trends and the culture of their cleaning ladies. They also go above and beyond necessary whenever there is a need for their staff while ensuring that the culture of trust and responsibility is well understood and appreciated.
Being friends and former colleagues, Kristine, Arabelle, and Heidi led the business with excellence. They uphold their standard of service through professionalism and respect. Each of them is an expert in their field, yet they judiciously improve through learning and experiencing the actual work of their business. This is an inspiring and empowering mindset for women leadership in managerial positions.
“When it comes to making decisions, we consider each person’s point of view, we value each member’s expertise, and we place emphasis on suggestions made by subject matter experts,” Kristine emphasizes. They are visionary business owners that created conscious decisions to embed their business with true social impact.
Maid911 continues to work towards being a household name when it comes to high-quality cleaning and services while working to remain a competitive, profitable, and sustainable business. This is not just in terms of prices and services but also in employee compensation. Their dedication to delivering the most excellent quality of service is further enhanced by their constant learning of best practices and the use of technologies and equipment.
“We are proud to say that we have created a MAID911 standard of cleaning homes based on our own experiences and our employees’ experiences through the years. We have been training our employees ourselves, the three of us… and we have even had personal experience with cleaning condos and homes,” they state enthusiastically. Their cleaning standards are high because they themselves know what it takes to create a clean and cozy home from when they began Maid911. The knowledge they have built over the years is then passed to their staff, who, in making their own discoveries, share them back as well. It is a cycle.
What Maid911 gets right is their efforts to creating a culture of empowerment and inclusivity. It is a fascinating business to support and emulate is that it is not easy to create a profitable business whilst staying true to exercising integrity responsibility towards their clients, communities and the environment.
They envision that in the years to come, they will continue to give poor communities jobs and opportunities and learn and train more with their staff so that they continue to execute their work considering environmentally conscious practices.
“We continue to observe the trend of condominium construction in Metro Manila and continue to expect an increase in demand for housekeeping, particularly given that the pandemic is still ongoing. As our competition has grown over the years, we will work to remain competitive not only in terms of our prices and services, but also in terms of employee compensation.”
“In terms of business, we want MAID911 to be a household name when it comes to quality housekeeping services. That clients are satisfied while the business remains sustainable and profitable. In terms of society, we want to give poor communities jobs and opportunities. In terms of the environment, we intend to keep providing appropriate staff training (e.g., water usage, report water leaks, turn off and unplug appliances while not in use, etc.). We will also make an effort to reduce chemical use and switch to environmentally friendly cleaning products and consumables.”
Maid911 is a commendable organization that goes above and beyond their duty to perform as a business, though enacting their vision that encompasses all of the areas which they can influence.
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Kristine Anne Sumira, Operations Head
Heidilyn Cabanero, Finance Head
Maid911 is an inspiring story of a business that seeks to lift individuals and communities through giving training and employment to those who may not have had the available opportunities presented to them. Created by a team of working corporate women, the business helps empathize with homeowners who struggle with keeping a clean home at the demands of a challenging work schedule.