It is certainly important for you to look for potential employees for your cleaning business that can surely spell out the success for your cleaning business. One of the things that you need to consider when it comes to the types of employees that you will hire is of course their capability and personality altogether. You of course need to get the one who is perfect for the job in all aspects. Hire someone you can train and someone who could help you earn money for your cleaning business as well.

The personality and traits of your prospective employees are crucial in the decision that you will make. These things will actually determine whether or not they are worth hiring to join your team and your cleaning business as well. So, make sure to check out the characteristics of your applicants before employing them. Consider the characteristics that this article will provide you in order to know whether to hire the applicant or not. Indeed, the one who possesses all the characteristics that will be mentioned in this article will be most likely to be hired in your cleaning business.

Typically, when you meet an applicant for interview, the first characteristics that you will look is the appearance. Of course, you would want an applicant who dress neatly and pleasant enough. Definitely, physical characteristics can set a positive influence for you to be interested to know that applicant some more.

If the applicant you are interviewing shows confidence, then you will be interested to get this applicant for your business. It can set a positive influence to you if you see your applicant with good physical characteristics. But, you will have to check out the applicant carefully since over-emphasis on the appearance of the applicant can just be a cover up to the real him/her.

An applicant who knows what his or her job is an advantage. But you still have to ask several questions that can prove that he/she has the knowledge on this field.

You need to look for someone who is alert, active and dynamic person who is always excited to do this job. Look at the person’s experiences, check out if it shows that he/she have completed and made all the tasks effectively.

Of course, someone you would want to hire, an applicant a person who is mature enough, he/she must be ready to talk about his/her weak and strong points, do things in order to minimize the weak points and maximize the good ones.

These are the traits that you need to look at the applicants you are handling. Interviewing applicants is a great way in finding potential employees for your cleaning business.

How to Effectively Train your Cleaning Business Employees
One of the most important things you have to keep in mind after you have hired your employees to work for your cleaning business is training them. It is important to train your employees in order for them to be able to keep up with your requirements and expectations when it comes to a cleaning business.

You need to bear in mind that it is your responsibility to provide proper training to your new employees. You need to provide training for your new employees and this training should be informative and helpful. In order to come up with an effective and informative training, you need to plan it out.

You have to plan the lessons in advance. In planning in advance, you can create handouts that are focusing on all the information that they need to know about the business. Since there are lots of chemicals that you need to explain to them, you need to categorize the chemicals such as all-purpose cleaners, window cleaners, carpet cleaners, disinfectants and so on. Each category, you can discuss it in whole, in order for your new employees to remember everything you tell and discuss to them. If there are specific chemicals that you need to clarify some more, you can provide them additional information.

It is best to let them know the importance of handling them material safety data sheet. Since this data sheet possesses important health and safety information on all the chemicals that your cleaning business has, you need to tell them the advantages of having this data sheet.

With this data sheet, they will gain information about the effects of each chemical that you have in your cleaning business, as well as safe handling and emergency procedures. They can also be aware with the required clothing in cleaning up and using the chemicals.

Saving Money on Supplies for Your Cleaning Business
Nowadays, everything has become very expensive. If you happen to have your own business, chances are it would definitely be advisable for you to save up on your supplies for your own cleaning business. Money is of course very much necessary for your cleaning business because there’s a lot of things to set up and start with. Buying everything that you need for your cleaning business can definitely be expensive on your part and it can definitely take a toll in your savings. But if you do the right things, then you can surely make your cleaning business successful.

Cleaning supplies are very important for a cleaning business and for the clients you will do services with. You must have the right cleaning supplies and products on hand before you deal with your clients. Some people do not know that it would be better to get these supplies in bulk. Yes, you heard it right, it is better to buy in bulk to save not only time but money as well. If you buy in buy, you can save money and this money, you can use it for something else. There are lots of supplies you need to buy in bulk; this article will mention a few, read on.

In providing cleaning services, you need to protect your hands, so you need to have rubber gloves. You can buy rubber gloves in bulk; this will not just help you make your life healthier it can also provide you with hands in good shape.

See: Start a cleaning business

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!

See: How to start a cleaning business

Letting go of an employee is never easy and this goes with any type of business and that includes cleaning services. There are some things that you can do to prevent this, but if it really becomes necessary to let go of someone be sure that you take the necessary due process before terminating them.

Even before you begin hiring people for your cleaning services, be sure that you have your company policies and procedures well intact. You need to come up the proper procedures on how your business works and create an employees handbook detailing everything they need to know about your business. The handbook is to be given to your employees when you hire them. Advise them to study it well so that they are aware of your company policies and procedures and if there are any clarifications or questions to ask you as soon as possible to prevent any future problems.

Consult the Cleaning Business Handbook
Your employee handbook should be easy to read and understand. Discuss the contents of your handbook the fist day that they get to work. The handbook would be as detailed as possible with regard to the goals of your company and the methods that you plan to employ to reach these goal. Discuss your policy with attendance clearly as people often neglect this. Aside from attendance policies, you need to include work performance and ethics, personal conduct and how you plan to evaluate them in their performance. Decide on how often the evaluation will be. Remember not to just give your employees handbook to your staff but be certain you explain it to them as well, if you must, have them sign a form indicating that they have received the handbook and understood the contents of it. This will protect you and your company and at the same time gives your employees the guidelines of what they can and cannot do in your cleaning business.

After providing the handbook for your employees, it would be also beneficial for you and your employees to have a written documentation of what their job description will be. This job description will help you evaluate them and define the necessary skills and experience that you require from them in that specific position. Knowing their job description can show your employees that you want to treat everyone fairly and that you demand the same standard and output from everyone and you are not bias.

Keep Tab of Offenses and Violations
Another thing you need to consider having is documentation of behaviors that violate your company policies and procedures and what would be the consequences of doing so. You need to have forms would need to be filled out during violations. Be sure you have all the necessary and vital fields in the form such as the name, job position, date and location of the infraction and the recommended course of action to be taken. If there are any infractions these forms must be signed by both supervisor and the employee involved. You have to make sure you file this together with the employee’s record so that during evaluation it would be easy to see them.

Job performance evaluations should be done on a regular basis so that you can see if your employees are growing and improving. These evaluations is usually done after the first 30 days of employment then followed by after ninety days then usually every six months. Timely evaluations for your employees would not only be beneficial to your business but will advise them on the areas that they need to improve on and if they are doing their jobs correctly.

Now once you have all these laid out and an employee is not able to meet the standards of your company or has violated or has committed a terminable offense, you still need to do everything in process. Don’t just walk to them and say their fired. Every termination has to have grounds. You can’t terminate an individual just because your feel like it. Laws also protect employees from abusive employers and there is such as thing as wrongful termination.

This is the part where documentation is very critical. Be sure that if you are planning or going to terminate an employee you have all the documentation to support it in case they complain or want to know the specifics of their termination which most employees would want to know.

Cleaning Business Personnel Issues
The usual problems that cleaning companies often have to face with their staff are tardiness and absenteeism. Make certain that from the start of their employment you tell them about your policy on this and what would happen if there are any violations in this. Absences and tardiness may be excuse from time to time and you need to be informed if they are going to be so. When you issue a warning, make sure that you state the problem as clearly as possible and what will happen if nothing changed in his attendance. Be detailed as possible so that they are aware of the gravity of the offense. After having this talk with them and you have issued the necessary corrective action, have them sign a form that would indicate their action plan and that they have understood the policy and that further violation would escalate the corrective action.

There are certain offenses that would require you to give warning while others would immediately result to termination. Terminable offenses may include stealing, willful destruction of private and company property, etc. Have these terminable offenses listed on their employee handbooks that they should study well.

Keep them Informed
When there is a need to terminate an employee make sure all the paper work is ready. Start with a meeting with the employee in question detailing the reasons why you have been forced to take this action. Have the employee sign the necessary termination letter that explains the reasons and that he or she understands the letter. Make sure that the meeting is only between you and the employee with no other people around. Termination of an employee will restrict them from going to all unauthorized places in your place of work. There are to refrain from using your company name and would prevent them from accessing places of your business.

It is never easy to terminate an employee but its part of being a manager. You have to consider the welfare of your business and the people who work for you.

See: How to start a cleaning business

Cleaning companies have different approaches in performing their tasks – all of them are intended to maximize employee efficiency for bigger company profit. Cleaning companies usually use either zone cleaning or team cleaning in their business approach. The choice will all depend on the nature of the place to be cleaned and the kind of employees the cleaning service has.

First, we have to differentiate between zone cleaning and team cleaning. Zone cleaning involves the use of a single employee to do all the cleaning tasks in a particular area of a building – a zone. The zone could be a specific floor of the building which an employee has to take care of, an area that the employee may consider to be “his own”. Said employee will get to be familiar with all the aspects of the area he is assigned to, knowing the ins and outs, and developing a deep sense of responsibility. It will also minimize security problems as there will be only one person who will have access to that particular zone of the building during cleaning time. The common problem in the cleaning business – boredom, will be eliminated as the cleaner assigned to a particular area will have a variety of tasks to perform.

Team cleaning, on the other hand, identifies the different tasks to be performed in cleaning a building and assigned those tasks to different groups or employees. Each employee, or group of employees, will have to perform only a single task for the entire building or cleaning area. Each group will go from one area to another doing their specific task while another group will follow doing a different one. Cleaning tasks in zone cleaning are normally broken down as follows:

• Light Duty – This involves the tasks of emptying trash cans, dusting, and spot cleaning. The members of the team will go from room to room doing only this particular duty.

• Vacuum Team – The team’s only function is to vacuum carpets and hard floors.

• Restroom Cleaners – They clean, sanitize and restock restroom supplies.

• Utility team – They clean lobbies, spot clean glasses, scrub and mop hard floors, and take out trash to dumpsters.

One advantage of team cleaning is the specialization involved. An employee who is doing the same task over and over again becomes a sort of specialist in that given field. The employee becomes very skilled and efficient in the task assigned to him, saving on man hour needed to finish a particular job. This will translate to bigger profit for the cleaning business. There will be no need of training each employee on all aspects of cleaning – a task that could both be time consuming and expensive.

But before you make your decision on whether to use zone cleaning or team cleaning, you first have to take a close look at the building to be cleaned. One building is different from another; they have different needs and therefore different cleaning approaches. Use a cleaning approach that will best suit the needs and conditions of the building to be cleaned.

See: Start a cleaning service

There are a million and one ways for you to profit from your skills without having to be an employee. Having your own business gives you these opportunities; what you need to do is to assess your skills to make sure you venture into something that can give you success.

If you want to start a business that does not need a large capital and can give you instant and easy profits, you can look into the virtues of the cleaning industry. If you decide to start your own cleaning business, the potential is limitless. You can initiate by just offering one-man/woman services wherein you personally clean for the clients or you can have a partner or if you aim to be bigger, then a team.

The smartest decision would be to practice first. You can start a cleaning service at home and be your own cleaning man. You can use the vacuum you have at home for cleaning appointments with clients who require you to bring your own cleaning equipment.

If you start a home based cleaning service, you should look into the zoning regulations in your area for rules on using your property to create income. Other than that, you might be required to register a business name to acquire the necessary permits and/or license to operate. Since you will be in contact with other people’s property, see to it that you are bondable and insured. This does not only protect your clients but your person and equipment too.

Basically, the cleaning requirements your clients will have include disposing trash, vacuuming, and mopping, sweeping, washing windows (sometimes just the interior since outside windows would be left for specialized window washers that can handle cleaning windows for structures), cleaning and dusting desktops, bathroom maintenance.

With regards to time schedules, an office space would normally enter into contracts with you. The contracts stipulate how many times the cleaning would be required. This varies from office to office. Some would require twice or thrice a week clean ups and vacuuming, others would require daily cleaning, while others may require a person who can be in the office all day and then finish cleaning after office hours.

The cleaning requirements can also be affected by the type of industry the office is involved in. Most business offices have a ton of paperwork that you need to especially take care not to throw out anything important or those that may contain sensitive information. Other commercial spaces may need specialized cleaning like schools, where children are most likely to get virus and diseases from, and hospitals and laboratories that may expose you to chemicals and other hazardous elements.

Aside fro all that was mentioned above, there may be occasions that you need to finish tasks that are more complicated than the cleaning and tidying up mentioned above. Theses chores would include washing exterior windows, dusting the ceiling and light fixtures, maintain HVAC equipment, cleaning parking spaces, carpet cleaning, floor waxing, tile grouting, and Q-tip cleaning. These tasks are longer and more tedious but are special cleaning services that you need to offer your clients once in a while.

See: How to start a commercial cleaning service