What Cleaning Company Employees Want From Their Jobs
You teach them the skills and provide the resources they need to excel in the field, reward them with a paycheck, and demand nothing less than top notch quality. You have a winning business formula because you know what your cleaning customers want and you can deliver.
But have you given any thought to what your cleaning company employees want from their jobs?
Many of us are totally focused on growing our business by gaining customer loyalty. We put so much emphasis on pleasing customers that we sometimes forget to ask our employees about how satisfied they are with their job.
This old school of thought that the customer is #1 has now evolved to the focus beginning on employees – especially for service-based businesses like cleaning companies. The point of emphasis has changed from customers first to employees first. The belief is that putting your employees first will have a direct impact on the way your employees interact with your customers.
To quote best-selling author Stephen R. Covey, "Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers."
We've shared with you before that high employee satisfaction combined with a great work environment play key roles in your customer's satisfaction and loyalty. This win-win combination will not only help your sales grow but will support employee retention.
Let's begin with identifying what may de-motivate an employee. It's extremely important to engage each of your employees individually on a regular basis. This allows you a window into what that particular employee may presently be feeling about their current job situation, good and bad.
Each employee will have their own unique ideas about what motivates them and also what causes them to become aggravated at their job and lack motivation. Being able to spot certain de-motivators early and addressing them immediately will help to eliminate poor performance and employee turnover.
What De-Motivates Your Cleaning Employees
Below are some examples of employee de-motivators:
- Lack of respect among co-workers and management
- No sense of camaraderie in the workplace
- Lack of personal attention, empathy and caring from management
- Low wages
- Bored, repetitive work
- Management micromanages, not allowing employees make decisions on their own
- Overworked, tight deadlines, long hours
- Non-flexible work schedules
- Lack of discipline observed by other employees
- Lack of feedback
- Lack of growth opportunities
What Motivates Your Cleaning Employees
Every person is hard-wired for forward progress. As the leader of your cleaning company, you must identify the key motivational factors that you can incorporate to get the most from your employees. These motivational factors should be a consistent part of your company's policies and procedures, training, performance appraisal, wage structure, and orientation.
- Demonstrated appreciation for their work, letting them know they are important to the team
- Better wages and benefits
- Teaching new skills, cross-training in other areas
- Providing ongoing training that includes how to troubleshoot common situations
- Providing better working conditions, spreading the work more evenly among the staff
- Providing more flexible work schedules
- Being consistent with discipline among all employees, and being tactful when giving discipline (do it privately)
- Provide instant feedback, give positive feedback in addition to just negative feedback
- Offer promotions, growth opportunities, and additional training for promotions
Your Cleaning Employees Will Tell You
Nobody knows an employee's job better than the employee. They know what it would take to make their job better and more engaging. Imagine your employee retention rates if you'd make it part of how you run your business to include them in decision making by asking them questions like:
- What would make your job more interesting?
- What would make your job more challenging?
- What jobs or tasks would you like to take on if you had time?
- How can we help you succeed?
Here are some questions you can ask about adding variety to repetitive jobs
- Are you interested in cross training for other jobs/skills?
- Can you give me some suggestions to make your job easier or more productive?
- Would you be interested in leading a project or committee to improve certain processes?
- Can you teach me what you do and how you do it? Can you document this procedure for the company training manual?
Rewards and incentives to encourage pride of accomplishment
One of the best ways for cleaning company owners to show appreciation for employees who go above and beyond company expectations is by mailing or hand delivering an Employee Recognition Letter. A letter of recognition, whether just a stand-alone letter, organization recognition (employee of the month) and/or one that contains a reward or bonus, is a great encouragement for employees to continue to perform at a high level, encourages engagement, and employees who feel recognized and appreciated are likely to be highly motivated employees.
Sample Templates of Employee Recognition Letters
Other ideas are for low cost rewards and incentives to keep motivation uplifted
- Thank you cards
- Birthday cards
- Give tokens when they do something right. Collect so many tokens for different rewards.
- Ask what their least favorite job is and do it for them for a day
- For larger companies that don't often see the Owner/President, have him/her stop by and personally tell the employee what a great job he/she is doing
- Bake cookies or order pizza during meetings for the employees
- Start a Hall of Fame in your office
- Give an extra day off with pay
- Call them just to say “Thank You” (don't say anything else)
- Find out their interests and give a low-cost gift related to that interest
Ways you can give sincere, authentic praise to your cleaning employees
- Give praise the minute you see them doing something right
- Be specific about what they did right (ex: I often see employees vacuum over the mats without ever lifting them up. I notice that you take the time to move the mats to vacuum under them every time. That's the right way to do it.)
- Don't discuss other matters when giving praise – make the praise the focus of the conversation
- Praise both in public and in private, during company meeting and in the company newsletter.
- Encourage them to do more of the same. For example, “This is what you're capable of doing. How can we see more of that?”
Effectively creating a happy, satisfied team brings employees closer together; part of the core of the company. Letting them know they are valued, appreciated and important is part of the process. The visibility of management willing to acknowledge and engage its employees will have an enormous impact on their morale and job satisfaction, which in turn conveys itself down into the satisfaction of your customer base. Find out what motivates them; get systems in place for rewards and incentives, and soon they will be key contributors to your customers' happiness, and you will definitely see improvements in productivity and profitability.
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