Creating Resilience in an
Informal Sector:
How Hogaru is Transforming
Colombia’s Cleaning Industry

Hogaru is a digital platform that offers Colombian households
and small businesses cleaning services. Its workers have formal,
permanent contracts and access to vital benefits. This contrasts
with the informal employment and limited workplace protections
that are the norm for both the cleaning sector and digital platforms
in Colombia and globally.

Inclusive Employment Solutions

The Challenge
Hogaru’s mission is to ‘formalize and dignify domestic work inColombia’. The cleaning services sector generates 2 percent of thecountry’s gross domestic product and employs over 750,000 people.1
However, these workers are among the country’s lowest paid, and alack of education limits earnings and advancement potential. While
Colombian law requires formal employment for domestic workers,
in practice most cleaners work on a casual basis with no access tosocial security or workplace protections. Data collected by Hogaru
indicates only 25 percent of cleaners have access to healthcare,
only 30 percent get annual leave, only 18 percent have insurance
for workplace accidents, and just 1 percent are paid overtime. In
addition, 88 percent of contracts are verbal, and over 30 percent ofcleaners have been dismissed from a job with no compensation.2

Benefits for Business

Human Capital
Performance

Demonstrates
Corporate Values

Targeted recruitment using face-toface outreach, megaphones, and fliers in
low-income communities. Flexible work
arrangements. Support and hiring bonuses
for victims of conflict. Support to enroll
in government healthcare and pension
schemes. Mentors to help workers accesstransportation, childcare, and other services.

Advancement

Staff turnover fell from 16 percent in 2015 to 9
percent in 2022.

Accessto markets

Participation

Stronger customer service
and loyalty, with 92 percent
of clients repeat customers.

Distinguishes Hogaru’s brand amongsocially-conscious consumers.

Training in cleaning, customer service,personal development, with incentives andcash rewards for meeting milestones.
Resilience
Formal contracts with regular wages,
paid leave, a pension, and healthcare.
Small interest-free loans and support
to open bank accounts.

Empowerment

Benefits for Workers
While informal work and limited protections are common in
the cleaning sector, Hogaru employs its 598 cleaners on formal,permanent contracts. All are women, and for 90 percent this is thefirst time they have secured regular wages, paid leave, a pension,and healthcare. Hogaru also launched a second unit, Apporta, tofacilitate formal employment, including benefits, directly between
cleaners and Colombian households and small businesses.

Communications and grievance channels
through mentors, meetings with management,and surveys, or via phone or app.

1 Creating Resilience in an Informal Sector: How Hogaru is Transforming Colombia’s Cleaning Industry

Industry: Cleaning services
Size: 7,800+ clients, 239,000+ client visits, and$3.3mn in revenues in 2021.
Base of the Pyramid Workforce: Employs 598
women from low-income backgrounds as cleaning
professionals. Most are the sole income earner for
their household, and roughly 70% support children
and dependents. Many are victims of armed conflictor gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH).
Hogaru’s second unit, Apporta, facilitated the formal
employment of 420 cleaners by mid-2022.

How Hogaru Puts Inclusive EmploymentSolutions into PracticeParticipation: Target recruitment
Many of Hogaru’s cleaning professionals arevictims of armed conflict, in particular Colombia’s decades-longcivil conflict which officially ended in 2016. These individuals
are often unable to provide formal employment records
or a permanent address, so Hogaru helps them to accesscertification of their status as victims of armed conflict and related
government support. The company also pays certified victims ofconflict a hiring bonus, funded via a government tax incentive.

Participation: Reduce entry barriers
Hogarumentors—knownas‘madrinas’

and‘padrinos’, or godmothers and godfathers—help their cleaning
professionals to access vital services such as childcare, housing,and transportation so they can attend work. Mentors, who arecompany supervisors, also help workers to enroll in government
healthcare and pension schemes, and access company benefits
such as leave and healthcare. Mentors also help workers tocommunicate grievances at work or discuss personal issues, asupport many of these women previously lacked.

Recognizing that low-income women may lack access to digitalrecruiting platforms, the company maximizes its outreach by using
face-to-face recruiting methods such as announcing vacancies
in low-income communities and inner cities with a megaphone,
distributing fliers, and interviewing candidates who walk into thecompany’s central office.

Advancement: Offer fair pay
Hogaru supports workers with a package of benefits
that maximizes their earnings. All workers are offered a loan ofroughly $20 when they start their probation period, and if theirprobation is completed successfully, repayment is not required.

“We call our employees ‘cleaning professionals’ togive them the dignity they deserve. Without them,the company cannot function.”

Workers can also earn points called ‘kibos’ when they complete

Darcy Barrera, Human Resources Manager, Hogaru

work requirements, maintaining a successful relationship with acompany training or reach other milestones. These points can beexchanged for perks, such as time off. Workers can also earn cash
rewards of roughly $10-$20 on top of their salary by meeting all
customer, or meeting certain periods of continuous employment.

2 Creating Resilience in an Informal Sector: How Hogaru is Transforming Colombia’s Cleaning Industry

Advancement: Upskill

Resilience: Access to benefits

Workers can access the Hogaru Academy throughFlexible leave arrangements help Hogaru’s cleaning

the company’s app or website. The academy offers courses. inprofessionals balance work with their care responsibilities

cleaning, customer service, personal development, occupational

and personal needs. In addition to their standard annual leave

health and safety, and technology skills, as well as legal andallowance, workers can request one paid day off every 90 days foradministrative topics such as labor law. The aim is to help cleaninga medical appointment, and two paid days off per year to coverprofessionals develop additional skills that will serve them both atother needs.

work and in their personal lives.

Over 90 percent of Hogaru’s cleaning professionals
are in their first formal job, and for the first time,they have regular wages, paid leave, and access topensions, healthcare and other benefits.

Resilience: Enhance job and income stability
Cleaners employed on a casual basis in Colombia
usually earn less than $15 per day, are not covered by social
security, and receive no payment if they are sick or their shift iscancelled. These poor conditions mean casual workers often resort

Resilience: Facilitate access tofinance and financial literacy

to taking out high-interest loans, some of which are unregulated
and illegal, so that they can cover basic expenses or pay for family
emergencies.3
In contrast, Hogaru provides direct, formal, permanent contracts
for its cleaning professionals and they are paid every two weeks.
The company is responsible for finding and assigning clients, andcleaners receive their full salary regardless of whether they are
fully booked. Through this, Hogaru provides some of Colombia’s
most vulnerable women workers with a stable source of income.

The company provides workers who qualify withsmall interest-free loans, as well as loans for unexpected medical
or family emergencies. Repayments are deducted from wages
and recorded on pay slips. Hogaru also helps workers to complete
applications and obtain documentation to open a savings account.
The company is also developing a co-savings arrangementthat will match worker contributions for housing or education.

Most cleaners work eight hours per day for six days from Monday
to Saturday, divided into two four-hour shifts with a break for

Empowerment: Provide communications
and grievance channels

lunch. If they prefer, cleaners can work 40 hours per week over fivedays. According to Hogaru’s cleaning professionals, these terms
and conditions are significantly better than those of competingcompanies, which employ their cleaners on a fixed, one-year
contract and do not guarantee a rest day on the weekend.
Recognizing its role as an entry point to formal employment,
Hogaru uses induction training and other communication channels

In addition to the madrino and padrino mentors,
Hogaru uses several channels to empower workers and facilitatecommunication.
•Telephone calls and a dedicated app can be used to obtain
information about working conditions and systems, maketo raises workers’ awareness of the benefits of formal contracts.

suggestions, raise concerns, or get advice on how to respond to
mistreatment by a customer, for example.
•senior management every two weeks, and also provides“We want to break down barriers to entry forknowledge sharing and peer support.

underserved groups. We know that our workers
have many other responsibilities in their lives: the key
to expanding employment opportunities for them is

A Facebook group for employees hosts virtual meetings with•

Periodic surveys collect information that can be used to improvecompany operations and better tailor support for workers.

providing flexibility without sacrificing formality.”
Juan Cadavid, General Director, Hogaru“We feel heard and valued.”
Isabel and Angela, Cleaning Professionals, Hogaru

3 Creating Resilience in an Informal Sector: How Hogaru is Transforming Colombia’s Cleaning Industry

The Benefits for Business:
Hogaru’s Experience

Human capital performance

In addition, quality service and trusted relationships between
customers and cleaners made Hogaru more resilient during theHogaru’s focus on creating a supportive working

COVID-19 crisis. When lockdowns suspended all non-essential

environment has improved employee satisfaction and reduced

services, Hogaru launched a campaign called ‘Cuida a quien te cuida’turnover. According to company data, almost 80 percent of Hogaru’sor ‘Take care of those who take care of you,’ which convinced 60

cleaning professionals have not considered leaving their job; over 60

percent of its clients to continue making payments, thereby enabling

percent feel valued by the administrative team; and over 80 percent

the company to stay in business and to continue paying its workers.

are satisfied with the company. This is reflected in Hogaru’s annual
worker turnover rate, which fell from 16 percent in 2015 to 9 percent
in 2022. Turnover for those aged over 50 is only 5 percent per year.
Reducing worker turnover reduces operating costs, as the company
spends about $75 to find and train each new worker. Worker
retention also allows Hogaru to offer customers a regular cleaner,
which is an important selling point in a sector where customers put
a high value on trust and reliability.

Demonstrates corporate values
Hogaru’scommitment

toproviding

secureemployment and good working conditions for women at thebase of the pyramid is a key factor in its brand identity andmarketing. Hogaru appeals to customers who want a cleanerwho earns a fair salary, with fair benefits, and is employedwith all the statutory requirements, but who do not want the“Reducing turnover and worker retention are theadministrative burden of directly hiring the cleaner themselves.

major challenges in the sector. If you want tobuild steady relationships between customers andcleaning professionals, you need to put workers
and customers first.”
Juan Cadavid, General Director, Hogaru

Access to markets
Hogaru’s investments in training enable it to offer
high quality services, and this has been key in securing loyal
customers, fostering a stable operating environment for thecompany, and helping the business to remain resilient during
challenging times.
From 2015 to 2022, the average duration of a business relationshipbetween a cleaner and a specific customer rose 50 percent, fromsix months to nine months. In mid-2022, 92 percent of Hogaru’sservices went to regular, repeat customers. This loyal customer baselowered Hogaru’s operating costs, time, and resources spent onmarketing, setting up jobs with new customers, and answering theinevitable questions that arise with a new customer relationship.

4 Creating Resilience in an Informal Sector: How Hogaru is Transforming Colombia’s Cleaning Industry

Endnotes & Sources
Along with interviews with Hogaru management and worker focus group discussions
conducted in February 2022, and information from the Hogaru website, the following sourceswere used:
1,2

Business Call to Action n.d, Hogaru workforce and company data, accessed February 2022,

https://www.businesscalltoaction.org/member/hogaru
3

Valora Analitik. 2022. “200 mil trabajadores del aseo en Colombia podrán adelantar su

pago (Two hundred thousand cleaning workers in Columbia will be able to advance theirpayment).” Valora Analitik (Evaluate Analytics), March 15, 2022.
https://www.valoraanalitik.com/2022/02/15/200-mil-trabajadores-aseo-colombiaadelantar-pago/
Daniel Brown. 2021. “Qué son los estratos, el sistema “solidario” que terminó profundizando
el clasismo y la desigualdad en Colombia (What are the strata? The “solidarity” system that
ended up deepening classism and inequality in Colombia).” BBC Mundo, May 28, 2021.
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-57264176
World Bank. 2020. Databank: Poverty headcount ratio at national poverty lines (% ofpopulation) – Colombia.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.NAHC?locations=COIN PARTNERSHIP WITH

5 Creating Resilience in an Informal Sector: How Hogaru is Transforming Colombia’s Cleaning Industry