Episode 44: Is Your Cleaning Company Leaking Profits?

As cleaning business owners we always seem to pause when we see someone cleaning to see if they're doing it the way we would, if we can find mistakes in their method, or inadequacies in their equipment.

In this video I share two examples of inefficient cleaning and poor use of supplies and equipment that surely caused a leak in company profits.

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Episode #44 - Video Transcription

I was recently at a building and noticed a guy washing the outside windows. Now if you're watching this video I assume you're in the cleaning industry and like me, you pay attention whenever you see someone cleaning. I think we secretly like to see people messing up so we can laugh and say, "I would never do it that way!" Or, "My employees would never do it that way!" But after you hear this story, I'm going to challenge you to see if there is anything similar going on in your own cleaning company.

First of all, I noticed the guy washing windows was using an aerosol glass cleaner. Now if you know anything about cleaning chemicals, you know that aerosols are expensive! A can of aerosol window cleaner cost about $7.50 on average. I don't expect the employee washing the windows to know this, but I DO expect the owner of the cleaning company to know this an make sure they're buying more economical cleaning products.

The other mistake I noticed is that he was using a pack of multi-fold hand towels to hand-wipe the windows. There are a couple things wrong with this. First, like the aerosol cleaner, using multi-fold hand towels to wipe windows is very expensive! A case of hand towels will run you around $30 dollars, so it's about $3 dollars for one pack. He must have easily gone through two or three packs by the time he finished washing all those windows!

Now remember, I said he was hand-wiping these windows, and he was doing two sides of a commercial building! Why wasn't he using a squeegee? Think about all the effort he had to use to hand-wipe each window. Talk about a worker's comp accident waiting to happen! I can see it now -- he comes in to work the next day complaining of shoulder or back pain.

Oh, and speaking of working safely, the chemical he was using is considered hazardous and he was not using any type of personal protective equipment like gloves or eyewear. Another worker's comp accident waiting to happen. As I marveled at the number of things wrong with this picture, I wondered how many other expensive products and inefficient, unsafe cleaning methods were being used at this facility.

Here is another example I witnessed recently. Now I hate sound like I'm picking on window washers, but this example involved a pair of window washers that were supposed to working as a team. The first guy had the scrubber, so he was to scrub each window with solution. The second guy had the squeegee and was to follow behind squeegeeing the windows. But these two guys spent about 10 minutes working on an area probably 15 or 20 feet wide. They spent most of the time talking, and walking the 10 feet to the window bucket and then mosying on back, showing absolutely no sense of urgency.

If you're going to have people work as a team, then you need to train them on not only how to do it efficiently, but on how to have a sense of urgency! These two were certainly milking the clock, so just imagine how much payroll was wasted on this job. There was certainly no profit being made.

So here is my challenge to YOU. If you're concerned about the low profit margins in the cleaning industry, I want to you take a look in your storage closets to see if there are any expensive cleaning supplies you can replace with more efficient, economical supplies.

Next I want you to start watching your employees. Are they working efficiently and the way they were trained? Or are they taking shortcuts that are costing you money? Are they working safely and using personal protective equipment? If not, it's not only a traning opportunity, but an opportunity for you to add more profit to the bottom line!

I'd love to hear your comments about this topic, AND, I'd like you to share any similar stories you might have witnessed. Just post your comments below the video at CleaningBiz.tv.