Constant improvement keeps customers, shareholders happy

Johan Gerber is the MD of Supercare Services Group

Tell me about Supercare Services. Supercare by Empact Group offers contract and specialised cleaning for a range of commercial, industrial, health-care, education, transport and retail environments.

What makes you good at your job?

My entrepreneurial background set me up for a successful transition into the corporate world.

My experience helps me question current models and drives me to pursue enhanced practices and efficiencies. I’m also continuously seeking ways to improve our systems and service levels, models and structures. As a business, we operate in a labour-intensive industry, which makes the ability to augment and improve our service models important.

I’m also a people person, which helps me immensely in dealing with the various teams and staff members who form part of our business.

What is your morning/get-ready-forwork routine?

I start my day with a 45-minute jog. This is followed by reading the news on my phone while I drink an espresso.

Then I check my bank balance (laughing out loud), drop the children off at school and, when I get to the office, immediately check my dashboards for work reports.

How did the pandemic affect your business?

Issues that arose, particularly in the healthcare industry, were simple things such as keeping the soap dispensers full, during and after Covid-19, when people were encouraged to wash their hands more frequently.

In a hospital setting, patients, staff and visitors are constantly using the dispensers, which means making sure dispensers are replenished timeously, and this was a new challenge.

Our new method gives you a “never out” system where, when your consumable is finished, a backup reservoir tank linked to a dashboard shows exactly which dispenser is empty, so we can act and arrange a refill immediately.

There are so many reasons I’m proud to be part of this company, and even more so during Covid. In the middle of the pandemic, with critical medical and food supplies, we actively made plans using our resources and staff to get the essential goods to where they were needed.

What are some of the challenges facing your industry?

It has always been balancing the delicate relationship between minimum wage and living wage. For us it’s being able to find a sweet spot when it comes to paying our staff a living wage.

We also have to provide returns to our shareholders while providing the best pricing for our customers. It’s also finding new ways of introducing technology as part of our model to achieve this balance.

What did you want to be when you were a child?

An entrepreneur or a CEO of a company that could influence a lot of people in a positive way. I also wanted to be in a role that would enable me to inspire others to become good corporate citizens and focus on developing people.

What traits do you look for when recruiting for your company?

The most important thing is logic. You need to be someone who can apply logic to whatever you do. Also the ability to interpret data — huge amounts of data — as we continuously deal with data to improve on our service excellence.

Lastly, natural leaders capable of leading people with integrity.