What Cleaning Company Employees Want From Their Jobs

As a cleaning business owner, you are aware that employee negativity and dissatisfaction trickles down to your customers in a negative way. So making a change from always putting the customer first – the old model – to placing your employees' happiness first, can be a challenge.  However, making this change would nip negativity, dissatisfaction and stress in the bud.

We've shared with you before that when employee satisfaction supersedes customer satisfaction, that happiness and satisfaction of your employees translates forward to your customers who are then also satisfied.  Subsequently, your sales grow. Let's look at some of the considerations to facilitate this change.  

What De-Motivates Your Employees. It would be interesting to do an anonymous survey of your employees to see their candid feedback about these de-motivators. Using their constructive feedback would help you understand where to begin making the employee/client shift.

• Lack of respect
• No sense of camaraderie in the workplace
• Lack of personal attention or the sense that management cares
• Low wages
• Bored, repetitive work, not learning new skills
• Management micromanages, not letting employees make decisions on their own
• Overworked, tight deadlines, long hours
• Non-flexible work schedules
• Lack of discipline observed by other employees
• Lack of feedback
• Lack of growth opportunities

What Motivates Your Employees. Every human being is hard-wired for forward progress. These key motivational factors should be reflected upon and made part of your policies and procedures, your training, your performance appraisals, your wage structure, and your orientation training to set the pace initially.

• Demonstrated appreciation for their work
• Feeling as if they're an important part of the team
• A feeling of empathy and caring from management
• Better wages and benefits
• Teach new skills, cross-train in other areas
• Provide ongoing training that includes how to troubleshoot common situations
• Provide better working conditions, spread the work more evenly among the staff
• Provide more flexible work schedules
• Be consistent with discipline among all employees, and be tactful when giving discipline (do it privately)
• Give instant feedback, give positive feedback in addition to just negative feedback
• Offer promotions, growth opportunities, and additional training for promotions

Your Employees Will Tell You.  Nobody knows an employee's job better than that employee. He knows what it would take to make his job better and more engaging. Imagine the employee retention rates if you'd make it part of how you run your business to include him in decision making by asking him questions like these:

• What would make your job more interesting?
• What would make your job more challenging?
• What jobs or tasks would you like to take on if you had time?
• How can we help you succeed?

Here are some questions you can ask about adding variety to repetitive jobs:

• Are you interested in cross training for other jobs/skills?
• Can you give me some suggestions to make your job easier or more productive?
• Would you be interested in leading a project or committee to improve certain processes?
• Can you teach me what you do and how you do it? Can you document this procedure?

Here are some rewards and incentives to encourage pride of accomplishment:

• Tailor rewards/recognition to the individual
• Match the reward to a specific achievement
• Reward them quickly for the achievement
• Acknowledge them in meetings or company newsletter
• Using a specified time period is good for a rewards situation

These ideas are for low cost rewards and incentives to keep motivation uplifted:

• Thank you cards
• Birthday cards
• Give tokens when they do something right. Collect so many tokens for different rewards.
• Ask what their least favorite job is and do it for them for a day
• For larger companies that don't often see the Owner/President, have him/her stop by and personally tell the employee what a great job he/she is doing
• Bake cookies for the employees
• Start a Hall Of Fame in your office
• Give an extra day off with pay
• Call them just to say “Thank You” (don't say anything else)
• Find out their interests and give a low-cost gift related to that interest

Here are some ways you can give sincere, authentic praise to your employees:

• Give praise the minute you see them doing something right
• Be specific about what they did right (ex: I often see employees vacuum over the mats without ever lifting them up. I notice that you take the time to move the mats to vacuum under them every time. That's the right way to do it.)
• Don't discuss other matters when giving praise – make the praise the focus of the conversation
• Praise both in public and in private
• Encourage them to do more of the same. For example, “This is what you're capable of doing. How can we see more of that?”

Effectively creating a happy, satisfied team brings employees in as part of the core of the company. Letting them know they are valued, appreciated and important is part of the process.  The visibility of management has an enormous impact on putting your employees first, so that their satisfaction conveys itself down into the satisfaction of your client base. You'll never have to wonder if your clients are happy with your company's performance. You'll see it through their happy feedback.