Managing Cleaning Employees = Herding Cats?
Discover How Properly Managing Cleaning Employees Can Make Your Life Awesome…
Today Mike coaches Paul Bodin of LA Maids www.lamaids.us on managing cleaning employees.

The best way to get your employees on board is to have common core values. Core values gives you a basis for all your business decisions. It is far easier to encourage similar core values than to try to get cleaning employees to change the values they have

HOW DO I DISCOVER MY CORE VALUES? – Although you may be tempted to make your core values what you think your customers, colleagues or society wants you to be, they have to be REAL and true to you. Core values are PERSONAL. You live, breathe, sleep and eat your core values. The trick is to integrate what you believe into your business.

MIKE’S CORE VALUES: Have Fun, Make Money, Be Real and Help Out

Once you have identified your core values, managing cleaning employees gets far easier. Clear core values in your employee and client attraction system attracts amazing customers and employees. It also repels the wrong type of cleaning employee…

BONUS LOVIN: Core values are just as important to repelling the wrong people from your business than attracting the right ones.
Because the cleaning business is a relatively low paying industry, employers often see cleaning employees as a commodity. You may not realize that your people also see their job as a commodity. This creates a high turnover rate with cleaning employees. When your employee stays out too late the night before or just doesn’t feel like working, there’s a dozen low wage jobs waiting for them.

This is where shared core values and community comes in. Your company becomes more than just a job and a paycheck. It becomes a mission and family. This is what allows you to move from bossing/ managing cleaning employees to encouraging people and changing lives!

CORE VALUES AND DAY TO DAY LIVE – When it is time to discuss compensation instead of them wanting more and you wanting less instead of negotiation, it can be a conversation around shared values. The same goes for quality of work, being on time, attitude. With shared core values you help them live in line with what they believe.

This foundation allows you to encourage, grow and support employees instead of just “managing” employees.

Trying to “bully” employees into believing what you believe or being passionate about growing and improving is a frustrating waste of time. If you don’t share core values, it might be time to transition that cleaning employee to a different company.

PAINFUL TRUTH: If you don’t share core values- they have to go!
We all have had that employee that consistently gives push back. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to hold on to an employee you KNOW isn’t a fit because you “need” them. It causes headaches for you and the rest of your team. These employees are a cancer to your company culture and have to be out out ASAP.

BONUS TIP: Fire fast and hire slow.
For more great content on managing cleaning employees check out THIS PODCAST or if you are looking to hire a manger here is a great FREE VIDEO

WARNING: If you aren’t really living your core values, it can backfire.
When you hire employees with shared core values but don’t follow through and use them in your business, they will feel like they aren’t in the right place. This can cause them to feel tricked and good employees to leave while mediocre employees stay.

Track everything!

BONUS TIP: People will do what you pay them to do exactly.

If you don’t have some sort of GPS component to your tracking you should. So it’s not a matter of counting on employee’s reporting accurately- it’s just reading data.

If you find yourself constantly begging, pleading or cajoling your employees to do what you want them to do, that’s because you have set up a system that requires you or your management staff to do that!

People are motivated by pay, instead of begging and pleading, set up payroll so that if the employees would like to get paid, there are the things that need to happen for them to be paid.

When that rule is enforced, magically, your employees get creative on how to fill out their paperwork and it fill it out correctly.

The beauty of this system isn’t bullying your employees or teaching them a lesson, it’s putting the weight of the tracking problem where it belongs, on your staff.

This frees you up to do what you do best, run your cleaning company, not constantly babysitting your employees.

FINAL THOUGHTS – It’s not all about tracking and negatives. Give lots of rewards and recognition to good employees and do it in front of your other employees! Not only is this good for employees it makes your life and job a ton more fun and gives you energy when you face the difficulties that come with the cleaning business.

If you hate what you do, burn out is just around the corner. But “If you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life”

So take the time to discover your core values and implement them throughout your business and see the rewards of managing cleaning employees who share your passion.

Paul shares his experience in this week’s Lightning Round

Don’t mess with payroll, get a payroll company and let them handle it.
Don’t cut loose great employees when you can work with them to find a solution.
Create a culture of trust
Have you discovered your core values yet? Leave a comment below and let us know what they are!