You Just Can't Find Good Companies

While attending the BSCAI and ISSA conventions, I am always amazed that there is one subject that always seems to be thoroughly discussed---"We just can't seem to find good trained or trainable help these days. They stay a few days, if they even show up for work the second day, and they are gone." Sound familiar? You have probably participated in a similar discussion.

Traveling back from one of the conventions recently, the thought occurred to me, what if our line worker employees had a convention to discuss their issues? Would it go something like this?

"You just can't find a good company to work for anymore. They say they want good workers and they provide training but it never happens, of if it does, it is so poorly done that it just as well not occur at all. As a result, we workers just go from company to company until we find one that will give us the proper training needed to perform the work they are asking to do."

A different take on the labor problems of today, isn't it? Ever think of it in this way? I submit you should give it your careful attention.

In surveys taken from among cleaning workers who have terminated their employment in our industry from one or more companies, they have listed the following 5 things as to why they leave a Building Service Contracting company's employment.

1. NOBODY TOLD ME WHAT TO DO--This is not to be confused with nobody trained me. This means that no one even bothered to outline for them the tasks they were to do once they arrived at their work assignment. They were hired, told to report to a building, shown the janitor's closet, (if that much) and told to have a nice night.

Many times when the supervisor returns later that night, (if they return) they find the keys in the janitor's closet with a note, "Take this job and…"

2. NOBODY EVER COMPLIMENTS ME ON A JOB WELL DONE--We work in a business where the customer seldom tells us when we are doing a good job, only lets us know if something is wrong. So too, it is with our employees. So often the only time the line worker hears anything is when we deliver a complaint. When was the last time you went out of your way to compliment your employees on a job well done?

3. THERE IS A PERCEPTION THAT THERE IS NO ROOM TO ADVANCE IN THE COMPANY--Most all of us complain that we can't find any leaders in our organization but many times we are slow to let our people know that we are looking for people who want to advance.

I'm reminded of the time I asked one of my supervisors if she had someone who could take over as a team leader in a building we had just secured that would begin in two weeks. The answer was a resounding NO. I later learned why. This supervisor had spent considerable time getting her crew organized so they would do most all her work (pretty smart, huh?) and if she offered to promote someone from her crew she would have to expend considerable energy to train someone else to fit into the scenario. That is when I learned that I was going to have to become more actively involved in knowing who was working at the levels below the project supervisors.

4. NOBODY TRAINED ME--Even if we told them what to do (see number 1 above) we didn't train them on how to do it. Nearly every cleaning company outlines in their sales proposal how they have "trained personnel" but if you were to visit some of their offices you may have trouble finding a training area which could be a real problem if you have a prospect that would like to visit one of your training classes before making a decision to hire you.

5. PAY--This is probably the only one of the 5 that you don't have a lot of control over unless your customer dictates to you what you are to pay your people and then pays you accordingly.

Now, what can we take from all of this? Even though pay is an issue we all are aware of in our industry, we find it as number 5 when it comes to the reasons employees leave our companies. And you know what? We have control over the other four.

I have worked with companies that decided to focus their efforts on the top four areas in an attempt to reduce their turnover and we found some amazing results. We saw turnover rates go from 325% down to 70% in some cases and some as low as 40%. How we do it is the subject for another article but if you believe the statement that it costs a BSC about $510 to recruit, orient, and train a new employee (it's true), you can see the tremendous dollar significance to instituting processes and procedures that will address the issues outlined in this article.

So the next time you find yourself complaining that there just are no good employees anymore these days, think about if the shoe was on the other foot, would the employees be saying that there just are not any good companies to work for anymore.

Dick Ollek, CBSE
Consultants In Cleaning, LLC

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