How to get decent staff I'm at breaking point!

[Bedazzled]

Hi Everyone,
Last year I setup a cleaning business from scratch.

I have surprised myself, family and friends at how successful it has been so far. I have learnt a lot, worked very hard and provided the very best customer service and standards I can. Because of this attitude and decent marketing I have had no problem in picking up clients from across the domestic, commercial and industrial sectors. The work is definitely there!

My biggest problem so far? Recruiting decent staff. To grow the business further I need more staff.
The last couple of weeks have been incredibly hard as due to staffing issues – serious illness, bereavements and holidays, all happening at the same time, I have had to struggle and juggle to cover current contracts. It has made me really ill, I’m currently confined to my bed with both gout and flu and I think I’m at breaking point!!
Also, if the staffing situation doesn’t improve soon I may lose a very lucrative contract as I am struggling to service it properly.

I have now got to the point where I am questioning whether it is worth it. However, I won’t quit until I know that I have done all that I possibly can to solve my problems, so please can you offer any advice on the following questions, especially if you run a cleaning business:

• What are the best ways you have found to recruit your staff? So far I have posted vacancies with JobCentre Plus, my website, and other jobsites. I have also put word of mouth out and postcodes in shops etc. Pay is well above min wage, but so far no joy – apart from someone who has been recently convicted for theft and fraud!!

• Should I approach an employment agency as a temporary fix? I’m not sure this will be cost effective.

• Are there any successful cleaning companies out there who can give me hope that all this hard work will pay off?

Thanks and Best Wishes,
Daz

 

[Mitch3473]

I would be interested to see how you get on. I have a peripheral business connected to the cleaning industry and know of the problems. Some of my clients are turning work down because they cannot get decent staff and when they get them they are hard to keep.I suppose high staff turnover is the nature of the beast.

 

[Bedazzled]

I will keep you informed. Assuming I survive my afflictions!!

 

[e-vulture]

I would accept that you're not going to get great staff for this role, and make sure you always have backups, and backup backups, and then another line of backup staff lined up just to be safe. I find it hard to imagine anyone being overly enthusiastic about a cleaning job!

What criteria are you requesting for the applicants ? Some of the cleaning jobs I've seen have the most ridiculous requirements just to apply.

 

[patientlady]

To keep your staff could you offer a monthly bonus system, based on
Hours worked, punctuality, days off, notice given etc

Advertise this as a company benefit
Do you have your company pension scheme set up yet? Could this be an additional benefit.

 

[Office Cleaning]

Nature of the beast unfortunately.

Running a cleaning company is more like running a full time recruitment agency. Staff always let you down - as one of the poster’s above sagely put it, you cannot have enough backups.

If you can’t deal with staff constantly lying to you, letting you down, losing you work etc and it is already making you ill, I would strongly suggest walking away now whilst you can, it’s not going to get better and jeopardising your health is simply not worth it.

However I suspect this is not what you want to hear, so;

Don’t bother with job centres, complete waste of time - jobseekers have to apply or lose their benefits, therefore nothing but time wasters. Job agency aren’t going to get you good staff, but they will charge you handsomely. Maybe local job boards/notice boards - online/physical etc.

If you are really struggling with staffing it maybe to do with the areas you operate in , we never expand outside of our core areas (London Essex and Kent) because we know we will not be able to get staff, let alone good staff. We have to turn down quite a lot of work because of this.

I have 3 to 4 people working full time everyday constantly recruiting and interviewing staff, you need to look at this sort of pro rata commitment and if its feasible within your costings.

Either take it as part of being within the cleaning industry and shrug and move on, or move on to something that does not affect your health. Oh and lay off the sauce and stilton if you've got gout...

 

[Gecko001]

Are you hiring people local enough? No matter how much someone says he/she is keen to work for you at an interview, if they have to take a couple of buses to get to work in the morning their enthusiasm can be short-lived.

 

[HazelC]

To keep your staff could you offer a monthly bonus system, based on
Hours worked, punctuality, days off, notice given etc

Advertise this as a company benefit
Do you have your company pension scheme set up yet? Could this be an additional benefit.

Good shout - we did this as a recruitment agency and offered a free ipod shuffle to the top ten staff that did most hours that month, worked great when we were struggling!

 

[Bill1954]

Have you tried an ad in your local college / uni ?
Lots of students are always looking for jobs to help make ends meet

 

[SamStones]

I've no experience in the cleaning sector, so I don't know how good the staff would be , but if you need to use agency staff to cover jobs that your own staff can't do, even if you break even on the costings, as long as the job is being done properly then at least you still have the contract, and you can try and sort your staff for next week / month. Just a thought.

 

[Talay]

Having significant experience in this sector I bet a pound to a penny the reason why you are not able to recruit is because you:

a) pay too little

b) have not overcome the logistics of transport, both of employee to work and to customer

c) are competing on price

If any or all are issues, you are in trouble.

 

[andygambles]

Pay more money.

 

[Twinkle Toes]

As above, you get what you pay for.

Pay them well, treat them well and they will stay. Ok you may have to increase the cost to your clients, but for a reliable and quality job they will pay. Unless your only USP is price.

Concentrate on the domestic cleans, they will pay for quality, reliability and consistency. Commercial are only interested in price.

 

[myfairworld]

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I worked in a combined health/education centre which had its own cleaner. She was dedicated to her job, took a pride in it as the only cleaner for 'her' building, was known to the staff who appreciated her work, regarded the work as worthwhile as it protected the health of the vulnerable children who came to the centre and of the staff who worked there.

Then privatisation came along. The old cleaner was employed by the company who won the contract but they ceased to provide her with the specialist cleaning materials needed for the variety of surfaces and jobs within the Centre. She desperately apologised to staff for the reduced standard of cleaning but with one bottle of cleaning fluid for all jobs it couldn't be done and eventually she left, not only because she could no longer clean properly but because while the centre staff continued to appreciate her efforts the company who employed her treated her as a non-human chess piece to be moved around a board. The company supplied a replacement cleaner who didn't stay long for obvious reasons especially as she was earning less than her predecessor and so it went on until the company which had placed a far too low bid for the contract in the first place went bust. As did the next one and the one after that. In the meantime what had been a pleasantly clean environment became depressingly and dangerously dirty. I can't tell you the end of the story as life took me elsewhere at that stage!

Sadly observing this process + other experiences taught me a lot which was a help when I opened my own retail business:

below a certain wage the 'costs' of working quickly outrun the value of working;

I'd hate to clean (well I clean in my own shop but that's slightly different as it is my own business) but some people actually like it as long as they can do it properly and earn enough to make it worthwhile coming to work in the first place. Those who like to clean - who are after all ideal employees for a cleaning business - will tend to leave if they can't do it properly;

most people (not all but most) thrive on personal relationships and acknowledgement. Not the employee of the month sort of thing which embarrasses the winner as much as it annoys everyone else. I don't know how you translate this into a cleaning business but people like to feel known and acknowledged. This ranges from a friendly greeting when someone comes into work to quietly acknowledging to someone that they've dealt well with a difficult customer or sympathising with them over an impossible customer or even simply remembering their birthday and sending them a card. I know, I know, a birthday card sounds trivial but a handwritten card will sometimes get you more loyalty than a pay rise. People don't want to be pawns in a chess game they want to be people;

people value small things - especially if those things save them hassle - often above larger things. Certainly I've found in a shop that it is quicker and easier (not to mention how much working time it saves) to provide staff with limitless free tea/coffee//squash plus nice hand wash at the sink & a bottle of hand cream beside the sink for anyone who wants to use it and so on. Employees often value these small provisions in a big way, yet they cost the employer very little. Certainly in the retail world it also makes good sense to give employees one of a new product to try out at home on the understanding that they will provide some feedback about it. It is difficult to explain how much such small 'freebies' are valued as is the idea that the opinion of the employee is valued too;

as someone else has already said be aware of travel issues. Travel by bus in some areas is a nightmare and in most areas it tends to be very expensive - especially for someone earning a low wage. Many employees who own a car will be struggling to keep it in roadworthy condition if you are paying minimum wage or not much above. I'd reiterate the issue about employing people local to the jobs which need to be done (unless you are going to offer particularly generous pay). I'd always been puzzled by one woman employed in a Co-op convenience store close to my own business. She was so obviously supervisor or managerial material yet working as an ordinary full time assistant. Then I discovered that going home or coming to work for her involved walking out of the shop, crossing the road and walking three houses up the street and she was home, so no travel costs which makes any wage much more valuable, no time lost in commuting for the mother of a family, no tiring commute at the end of a very demanding working day.

 

[RBS]

Daz,

Have you tried posting on Gumtree, Indeed?

 

[TODonnell]

My impression is that cleaning jobs have a low barrier to entry and are badly-paid. That's a recipe for "Sorry, I can't come in today".

Pay 'em £9+ an hour, provide a uniform, equipment, cleaning chemicals, a career path, equity after x years, share of profits and see how hard it is to find staff then.

 

[RBS]

Adam, I think cleaning is 99p store model - its cheap business. I`m not sure if you can afford to pay £9+ an hour.

 

[TODonnell]

That's my point: cleaners get paid beans and have no career structure or benefits. Madame Middleclass hires a cheap one then complains that there's dust on the sideboard.

Oh, and let's be aware of The Race To The Bottom: "We can do it cheaper" is responsible for a lot of grot in British society generally.

I think if one were perverse one would hire the cheapest cleaners you could find, set them on a dirty house and then spend the afternoon having a good old gripe to their manager about their errors. Personally, I don't think anyone on £6.50 an hour is obliged to sterilise anyone's domicile.

I wonder is there a market for 'SAS Cleaners: No Dust Mote Left Behind.' ? You pay £50 an hour and your house is spotless. The staff have uniforms and are a bit OCD. Their manager makes them clean any spot they miss with a toothbrush. On their knees.

 

[DebbS]

I agree with Bill 1954, I used to be a driving instructor and used to teach a lot of students and a lot were looking for work and some were looking for cleaning work.

I know a few people who have cleaners and are prepared to pay that bit extra and pay holiday pay in order to have decent cleaners who they can trust and rely on.

Debbie

 

[dmckellar]

Theres good people out there, you need to weed out the wannabe's until you find the right candidate.

I run an industrial cleaning company and its "semi specialised" so when people tell me they can clean, i will offer a trial and put them into a house, it goes 3 ways:
1. they do well, and the story they have told me about their experience is true
2. they are hopeless and just told me a story to get a trial
3. they were ok, but have shown potential, therefore we are willing to train them up.

Have you maybe thought of looking to train people up to work for you, start them on a lower income and increase it as they get better, making you look like a good employer by doing so?

cleaning sector is notorious for staff rotation. sadly its part of the job and you just need to deal with it as and when (it will) happens

If you are based in Scotland, send me a message and if i can help you at all, even short term let me know