Training new hires is part of your job, but you can make it more thorough (and easier) with a custodial training checklist.
Some people seem so incredibly organized. Take that neighbor down the street. Every year he and his family host a block party. They get all the permits, hire a DJ, bring in a bouncy castle for the kids, line up half a dozen grills, and set up about a dozen drinks stations on the street. Weeks before the event, they send out sign-up sheets for food, drinks, supplies, and volunteer duties. They start decorating days in advance.
When party time comes, the whole thing goes off perfectly – even the small fireworks display just after sundown. How in the world is your neighbor so organized? It’s probably not much of a stretch to say there’s a checklist involved.
Checklists are the little miracles that keep everyone and everything on track. So it’s fair to expand that to using a custodial training checklist to help you successfully onboard new people to your team. A good checklist can make everything run smoothly, and it sets you and your new teammate up to do the job the right way – every time.
Create and update your checklists in real time with janitorial management software designed to simplify your job. Contact us today for a free demo and see all the features we offer!
5 Benefits and reasons to use a custodial training checklist
There are two ways you could approach a custodial training checklist. The more obvious one would be as a list that your new hires can consult as they go through their duties. The other would be to use the checklist for yourself. Why?
1. You don’t hire new people regularly
There are tasks and duties you perform daily. Chances are that onboarding new employees isn’t one of them. For smaller in-house custodial operations, you may only bring in new people once or twice each year, if that. Because there is such a significant time gap between new-hire training sessions, it can be hard to recall everything you need to go over.
A custodial training checklist optimized for a supervisor makes it simple to go through the training one step at a time. Your new hire gets a thoroughly detailed introduction to the job, and you don’t have to worry about forgetting important details.
2. A checklist ensures new hires do a good job
As much as we do our best to hire the right people, we all know that person who slips through now and then who really should not have been hired. They interview well, look like a stellar employee for the first week or two, then everything tanks. And it’s never just that one employee that suffers. Everyone on the team is impacted by the one person who cuts corners, fails to use equipment properly, and generally spreads discontent.
Often these employees will claim they didn’t know how things are done or that they were never trained properly. If you have a custodial training checklist, you can ensure that they were appropriately trained on all of your protocols. You and the employee both marked it off the list as you went through the training.
3. A checklist doesn’t leave anything to chance
This applies to both a supervisor and employee version of your checklist. For you, there’s a chance to get hands-on with your new hire and share your expectations, team culture, and all those little details that make your team so great.
For a new hire, a checklist helps them remember all the things about their responsibilities that aren’t so obvious. It takes away the pressure of wondering if they’re doing what they’re supposed to.
4. A checklist helps new employees feel confident
In addition to knowing what to do, a custodial training checklist can help new employees feel confident in knowing how to do the job. When this checklist is focused on new hires, you can go more in-depth as you create it.
You can cover proportions in mixing cleaners, the types of filters to change and which ones can be cleaned, how to take care of your janitorial equipment, along with other items that are too extensive to put on your general cleaning checklist.
This also eliminates the all-too-common issue of new employees thinking they are doing a job the right way, only to find out much later that they’ve been doing it wrong. With everything in writing (or on screen), there’s no wondering or guessing. The job can get done the right way every time.
5. A checklist helps your team function more efficiently
Doing a job the wrong way, then going back to do it the right way, is one of the most inefficient ways you can work. And without a custodial training checklist for your new hires, that’s exactly what will happen. Your veteran employees will have to go back over everything your new employee just did incorrectly. And if that’s not the case, your new employee will need to do the job a second time. That’s no fun for anyone.
That checklist can save you time in on-the-job training, too. The less time your team has to spend reviewing and re-explaining tasks, the more time they can devote to doing the work they have lined up. That’s not to say that a few tips and pointers here and there wouldn’t be helpful. It’s certainly beneficial for your long-term employees to share useful information, but it’s also nice when all the essential stuff is accessible at any time.
And just in case you’re worried about the need to carry around a checklist throughout the facilities, you can easily keep this checklist and so much more on a janitorial app. Keep track of your supplies, equipment maintenance, schedule of tasks, and track your progress all with a user-friendly, cloud-based app. It just happens that we know of one.
Save time and money with janitorial management software that keeps everyone in the loop. Schedule your free demo to find out how you can benefit from Janitorial Manager.