5 Strategies To Help Retain Cleaning Staff

Retaining Cleaning Staff doesn’t always have to be about financial reward and constant supervision.

If you plan properly and utilise digital alternatives where appropriate, you as a manager, supervisor or owner can ensure that you hire staff great staff who stick with you. After all, we are in one of the most transient industries around.

This article will explain how Staff Retention may not be as difficult as you think, if you adopt a fresh attitude and embrace technology and all of its many benefits.

Train And Retain:

The notion of “Train and Retain” basically means if you train new staff properly, adopt technology and focus on hiring the perfect employee for the job, you will have a much better chance at retaining your staff.

During the hiring process it is important to consistently refer to your Employee Avatar; the characteristics and attitudes that make up the perfect employee.

Once you have found the right person for the job, the focus must switch to training and how best to train them for their specific role. Ensuring that you carefully consider every aspect and utilise digital alternatives where possible.

Tools such as UHub’s Mobile Learning Platform does a great job in assisting you Train, Reward and Engage your Cleaning teams. However qualifying your staff upfront means hiring workers that are keen to learn.

There is no better way for them to demonstrate their willingness to learn than by demonstrating to you that they have some existing industry training.

Requesting industry certifications and licenses up front such as the recently launched Cleaning Safety Induction Card make a big difference when trying to retain workers.

Luke from the Cleaning Safety Card says that for cleaners new to the industry it is essential for them to be educated with Industry Best Safety Practice before commencing their first shift.

This helps set the tone for what requirements the company expects going forward and shows the new candidate a level of care and culture from the employer about the new candidates’ safety.

This is essentially the start of the open conversation between candidate and employer about safety that has no end date.

 

Creating A Community Within Your Workplace:

Cleaning can be lonely work at times so creating a community helps to retain staff and grow your team as a family rather than a disjointed group of people who don’t know each other very well.

Developing a Workplace Culture can really help to improve employee relationships with one another and with you as the owner or manager.

However, with a distributed workforce this becomes more difficult. Today’s software companies often now have distributed teams across the globe, but tools like Slack, Google Chat, and Facebook for Business mean these teams can communicate and stay up to date with what is going on within the organisation.

So too can you Cleaning Company.

Rapport is key and for most people if we ask and communicate around Family, obviously our Occupation, Recreation and/or Nationality we’ll find something in common with most of our workforce. By incorporating humour, inside-jokes, sporting updates, and team events your staff can find something within their role with your company that they don’t want to lose.

Employees who cherish their workplace and enjoy their role are more likely to become long-standing, trustworthy and hardworking staff members who endeavour to work their way up.

 

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Team Communication Platforms:

Everyone is building a Team Communications Platforms now days. Slack definitely lead the way in this space, Google Chat (only launched recently) Workplace for Facebook, WhatsApp for Business or Microsoft teams are all aimed at helping your teams communicate securely.

They can quite quickly create a sense of community in your workplace which leads to greater employee satisfaction. These tools become a channel for us to build Rapport with our distributed workforce.

Not to mention as we start employing cleaners from younger generations, their expectations change of us.

These generations embrace technology.

Therefore, staying in tune with the current trends can really assist in appealing to your employees and connecting with them on a level that they understand.

 

Conduct Interviews With Current Staff:

When hiring new staff members, a great way to set standards from the very beginning is to allow a current staff member to sit in on the interview.

The current staff member can explain how things work and how expectations are met. This kind of interaction from the very start can be very important as this particular staff member can act as an initial friend while at the same time can impress a sense of healthy hierarchy.

Employee rewards and satisfaction doesn’t always have to involve money. Cleaners will often focus on financial aspects when asking you about positions, but they also want to know about your business and the benefits. Their financial focus may be due to their previous companies’ of which didn’t offer anything else.

Standing out, adopting new trends, creating a community and showing genuine care and concern is what turns your team into a family.

 

Performance Reviews

While no one like criticism, we all enjoyable constructive feedback if it is delivered in the right environment.

If you are doing this in an informal situation, it means you don’t know what mindspace your worker is at that point. As humans we do value feedback, but we like to have it delivered on our terms.

So scheduling a specific time with your team members to reviews their performance is key. Whether it be in the office or out sharing a coffee, it’s extremely valuable to formalize it. More so, give your team the opportunity to give you feedback as an employer too.

What do they like? What do they need? What do they love about working for you? What do they dislike about working for you? Do they have any suggestion to improve service delivery?

Sometimes, as business owners, we think we have all the answers. Our team though always have a different perspective and objective feedback is critical in changing our behaviours as a business owners.

Tools such as Survey Monkey have a range of templates you can use and edit, to send to your team prior to their Performance Reviews.

More importantly, asking your team for help also improves your business culture.

 

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