I blogged recently that, when looking into how to get best value for money in public services, they should study ways to add value, not just ways to save money.
Real-life has just given me an excellent example of how this can work.
As I've blogged about before, I'm truly terrible at washing my windows. I've been considering hiring someone to do it, but I have no idea how to go about hiring someone who is good.
It turns out, this year my condo decided to do a pilot project: the professional window-washers the building hires to wash our inaccessible windows would also do our balcony windows.
It was a resounding success!
It took two window-washers with just 10 minutes to wash all my balcony windows as well as the inside and outside of the glass under the balcony railing, and I can't see any streaks!
In contrast, it takes me an hour to clean the same windows, and I always leave streaks behind.
They did have to come through my apartment to get at the balcony, but they were accompanied by a building security guard who is known to me.
In contrast, if I hired someone myself, I'd have to be alone in my home with this unvetted stranger, or impose upon someone to come sit around my apartment so I wouldn't have to be alone in my home with this unvetted stranger.
These window-washers were professionals, with professional-calibre equipment that I've never even seen available for sale in the kind of retailers where someone like me might plausibly buy cleaning equipment. And they were hired by my building's professional property managers, who have experience in hiring workers for building maintenance tasks.
In contrast, I am a very amateur window-washer with amateur equipment, and anyone a private individual like myself can hire for a one-off job is also likely to be pretty amateur with amateur equipment - an odd-job sort of person rather than someone who washes windows 40 hours a week. And I have no experience whatsoever hiring anyone to do anything, and haven't a clue how to tell if someone is good and trustworthy until after the fact (and sometimes not even then).
And the marginal cost to me? Zero! It was so easily absorbed into the building's overall maintenance budget that my condo fees aren't even going up for next year!
The rental apartments I've lived in would never have done this, because they were businesses with a profit motive. Hiring window-washers to wash windows they could reasonably ask tenants to do themselves would take away from their profit.
But a condo doesn't have profit motive - the purpose of the condo's budget is to meet residents' needs. So we were at liberty to spend more money to pay skilled professionals to do the job, which got better results far more quickly and easily than if they'd left the task up to us to do individually.
Definitely better value! And definitely the sort of value we'd want to add to our public services.
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