No employee comes to work with the wish to intentionally do a poor job nor does any manager ever spend time planning to berate or embarrass and employee. Yet both happen too often and are the behavior the justifies the same return behavior. This season we can just spend a moment to say the kind words that don’t come easy, restrain the harsh words that do come easy and consider for a second that mabye no one is trying to take advantage of me…

The best training sets standards for high quality results but also continually improving work (quality and quantity) that is powered by deep employee job satisfaction.

Good training establishes standardization. Standardization creates an environment in which the employee can understand the rewards cycle for their work and to develop patience and stamina until he feels the intrinsic rewards for working.

Cleaning personnel are intially more resistant to training since unlike many skilled trades, apparently acceptable results can be achieved without training. In the eyes of the trainee, the taught methods usually require greater operator effort and thus further delays rewards. I describe rewards as the level of self satisfaction derived from work.

Some examples of low rewards and high rewards cleaning work:

Low rewards cleaning work:

Work for which subtle differences are noticed after cleaning task has been completed.

Work completed unwitnessed by others.

Cleaning completed in several steps before final results are obtained

“High” rewards cleaning work:

Work for which a dramatic difference is noticed after task is performed.

Work that does not require extensive set up time

Work that is visible to public and/or peers

Work that can be viewed in aggregate after completion.

Work that has not the option of postponement.

Common Janitorial Work Slippage avoided by training

Quantity acceleration- Ever higher quantity production with lower and lower quality levels. The bad habit of expecting higher and higher rewards is developed without regard

Late start and never finish- Employees who gain rewards from excessive preparation for their cleaning shift however never fully finishing a proper workshift resulting in some high quality results but low productivity

Extra credit cleaning- Occurs when employee subconsciously avoids regular assigned tasks to persue “extra” work but consciously justifies the bad habit by claiming they are doing “extra” work.

Early start and stop- Improper supervision. Incomplete training resulting in employee achieving good production and personally profiting from the efficiency but unfortunately establishes negative incentives for reducing workshift.

At the end of each fiscal year we make plans for the most important of our duties as cleaning contractors; the setting of wages for our employees at all accounts. Especially in Connecticut, direct labor is by far our largest expense, so it is very important that we always pay attention to pay. By managing wage increases by looking at two distinct components, merit increases and core inflation increases See: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf we believe that this maintains the “A” list of our hourly staff. There is no other option, B & C grade hourly staff are much higher in cost when you consider much higher skilled supervision needed to operate lower motivated staff. Accounts attract B&C staff by default by failure to maintain competitive wages. To the client this is one of the most cost effective duties we perform, which is distilling a whole year’s knowledge of the wage market on behalf of our customers. This always insures in the long-run the lowest possible cost.  

What I hear most often from facility managers as the main complaint of the custodial contractors is high turnover from their previous cleaning provider.

The way to mitigate high turnover among cleaning personnel is active HR management.

Three steps: 1. Choose working people 2. Learn the use of non-monetary pay 3. Continual monitoring of pay rates by zip code with variable pay incentives. In collective bargaining situations (unionized environments) turnover is less since janitorial pay rates are considerably above market rates thus turnover is sharply reduced but unfortunately replaced with cost and stagnancy.