Providing employees with incentives is crucial to any type of business, particularly a cleaning business. This is to encourage them to stay focused when it comes to their work and for them to stay consistently good with the type of work that they do.
Here are some ideas on how you can hook your employees to stay and work in your cleaning business:
1. Cash incentives
1. Gift cards to local stores like Walmart, Target, or food chains.
2. Paid time or days off.
3. If you can show them how they can benefit directly from the growth of the business by bringing in new clients, and by the current customers being complaint free, you will eventually develop a healthy team spirit within the company. They have to see how lots of new business and happy customers ultimately reflect on their paychecks. They can then get raises, enjoy getting new equipment, etc and everyone simply benefits. You can even hold a “company party” or weekend away activity whenever a certain number of new accounts are met, or after a period of time that the company goes complaint free.
4. We give a “Star-performance card” when positive feedback comes in, and when a phone call comes in that’s positive we often attach a “Happy Card” (a gift card of a small amount, maybe $10 at Wal-Mart). It’s an unexpected surprise.
5. We bonus generously when an employee refers a new client to us. So, if the client comes back to us three or more times, the employee gets say $100! We give them business cards to pass out to neighbors and passers by.
If you have not even tried offering your employees with any of these ideas, then now would probably be the best time for you to try it out.
High Employee Turnover: One of the Biggest Problems for a Cleaning Business Owner
If you’re in the cleaning business then you’ve probably experienced the problems with high employee turnover rates. Despite the continued rise in unemployment rates around the country, keeping employees happy and loyal remains to be a problem. Here’s one such experience shared by a cleaning business owner:
For the sake of anonymity, let’s just call him Bob. Having been in the cleaning services business for less than a year, this entrepreneur from Texas shares that so far he has fired16 of his employees, 2 quit and only 8 of his original 26 employees remain in his company.
He admits though that of the number remaining, he would readily let go of most of them if he could only find more qualified personnel.
According to Bob, he has previously tried hiring experienced cleaning service employees, as well as trained and certified employees and rookies who had absolutely no experience. But the trend among these people remained the same, seeing the track record, he had an inkling that keeping the roster of employees intact would be one of the biggest challenges that his cleaning business would encounter.
Given the fact that he already pays $9-$10 per hour, provides training, and has managed to strike a balance between being a boss and a friend to his employees, Bob feels just a bit loss with this personnel problem… He is in fact wondering if anyone out there can offer sound HR advice with long-term benefits. Sadly. Bob is not alone in his dilemma, his experience is a common problem across the cleaning service business – in any state or country.
Here’s how the cleaning service business people reacted:
Majority sympathized with Bob with his current situation, and assured him that he was definitely not alone. However, the overwhelming response pointed to Bob looking at the problem from within – himself and no one else! The industry assessment was that giving a higher salary rate does not make up for firing 16 people over the course of less than 12 months.
True, Bob may be hiring the wrong people too: Too young; too old; too desperate… but the truth remains that the employer has the bigger responsibility in making employees stay.
So if you have the same problems, ask yourself honestly: In your cleaning business, what are some of the reasons you’ve hired and fired people for?
Do You:
make your job expectations clear?
give your employees what they need to get the job done properly?
or… make bad hiring decisions from the onset?
Either way, it all starts and ends with you, the cleaning business owner.
When Hiring New Employees, Fist Impressions Last!
A cleaning business owner asked for help with deciding on whether or not to hire a potential new employee. The potential employee had experience cleaning and the business owner felt she would do a good job. The concern however is that she expressed an interest in starting her own cleaning business and already had a few friends of the family who were already clients (this was a residential cleaning business).
Other cleaning business owners shared the following advice:
* If you have second thoughts then go with your gut and do not hire the person. If that is one thing I have learned over the years when hiring people is to go with my gut feeling, it’s always right. As I said TRUST is earned. I trust no one until they prove themselves over time.
* I wouldn’t hire her. The chances of her tyring to do things “her” way are too high, which will over-ride your authority! Since she has had “customers”, she’s going to second-guess everything you do with YOUR business and try to tell you how to do it better… if you want the headache, go ahead and hire her, but I think you’re just asking for more drama than you’ll have time to deal with!
Hiring and keeping good cleaning service employees is and probably always will be a huge challenge in the cleaning service business. The only thing you can aspire to do is get it right the first time. Even after hiring the right people, you have to exert more effort in making sure that they know exactly what you expect them to deliver and prove as employees. Also, teach them exactly how to correctly do their jobs; Provide them with whatever tools or implements they may need to get their job done efficiently.
Lastly, never be afraid of giving them feedback… offer commendation and a “thank you” every so often does wonders for sound and healthy employer-employee relationships!
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