4 Steps for Effective, Accurate Workloading for Your Cleaning Business
If you're an experienced owner of a cleaning company, you've probably come to rely on a great deal of instinct in your business. In many cases this is beneficial – you have the wisdom to make quick decisions based on past experiences. However, in some cases, these “gut calls” may be underselling your service.
Developing an accurate workloading process is essential to the success of your cleaning business. By using data and facts to determine the scope of your project, you will be able to provide a more detailed plan for your client. This not only allows you to charge more accurately for your service, but more adequately address your client's needs.
But how to start constructing an effective and accurate workloading process? Here are the four steps you should take to make sure you are accurately assessing each project your cleaning business undertakes:
4 Steps to Accurate Workloading
1. Carefully Measure the Cleanable Space
Measuring the space you intend to clean sounds painfully obvious, but there's a bit more to it than many people think. The first thing you need to determine for proper workloading is assessing the difference between gross square feet and cleanable square feet.
Many cleaning businesses make the mistake of simply charging for the gross square footage of the space to be cleaned. This may seem like a good idea at first, given it likely means you'll be able to charge more. However, it doesn't provide your clients with an accurate picture.
Measuring out the actual cleanable square footage may take longer, but accuracy is what counts here. Not only will it help you get a better picture of the work that needs to be done, it will also allow you to charge your client fairly, planting the seed for a long-term, positive relationship.
2. Develop the Scope of Your Work
Once measurements have been taken, it's important to gauge the scope of your work. This means analyzing each task your cleaning technicians will be undertaking.
A good place to start is by breaking down the job into daily tasks such as emptying the trash and cleaning the restrooms. Then consider the detail work, like high dusting that is scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis. Finally, assess the project work you'll be billing for, such as carpet cleaning and window washing, which are usually scheduled on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.
By accurately and carefully scoping out your work, you'll be able to get a detailed picture of the project you'll be billing for. This will allow you to charge accurately for it, and remember any cleaning details you may have missed by just estimating the work that needs to be done..
3. Apply Production Rates to Calculate Labor Hours
The next step to getting a fine picture of the cleaning work your team will be doing is assessing the production rates of the project to determine labor hours. Production rates are the estimates of times to accomplish specific tasks under normal conditions.
There are several ways to do this, but some are more accurate than others. Production rates can be calculated per item (like a trash can), per task (30,000 sq ft/hr), per group of tasks (three minutes per fixture), or per cleaner (4000 sq ft./hr).
We recommend that instead of using industry averages like the ISSA's Cleaning Times document, you determine your own production rates. Here's an example of workloading a task:
- 10,000sq. ft. building
- Task: Vacuuming with a back pack vacuu, five day/wk (260 services/yr)
- Production rate: 8,000 sq. ft./hr
- 10,000÷ 8,000 = 1.25 hrs per service
- 1.25hrs x 260 services/yr = 325 hrs/yr
You can do this calculation for all tasks, to accurately determine a workload..
4. Determine Labor Cost and Other Costs
Once you've determined exactly how long the project will take, you can estimate your labor cost by multiplying the hours by your wage rates. You'll also want to include additional payroll expense costs like payroll taxes, insurance and benefits for an accurate assessment. Other costs you'll want to consider include supply costs, equipment, overhead and administration costs.
Conclusion
In four steps, you can make sure your customer has an accurate proposal that reflects a reasonable price. While your depth of experience has likely provided you the ability to estimate a lot based on your “gut feeling,” it simply won't be as accurate as carefully accrued data.
While proper workloading for your cleaning business might seem like a tedious undertaking, there is software help out there to make the process simpler. Check out our production and pricing calculators to gauge the costs of any job. And, if you're interested, you can look into a full featured software solution for workloading estimates courtesy of Team Financial.
With these tools at your disposal, workloading will never be easier, more accurate or have a higher return on your investment.
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