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It’s not easy to set yourself apart in the cleaning industry, validate the pricing of your services, and maintain a high standard of clean. We sat down with Mark Warner on the latest Business of Cleaning episode to talk about ways you can.
Educate and Train Your Team
Commercial cleaning accounts for a workforce of almost 3 million janitors and cleaners in the US alone, not accounting for maid and housekeeping services).
As Mark mentioned in our episode, given enough time, anyone can clean a room, but to do it efficiently and to the expectations of the building residents can be an entirely different matter.
Cleaning education and training not only prepare an employee to do their job, but drive consistency, effectiveness, and efficiency in job performance. It sets standards for completion, allowing you to confidently provide ongoing and high-quality services.
Indeed provides a great list of benefits that stress the importance of good employee training, including (but not limited to):
- Aids with performance improvement and increased skills
- Prepares team members for upward mobility through the organization
- Opens the door to find efficiency gaps
- Increases perceived value to the employee
Good training, when established properly, integrates with the work-life of your company in a way that provides value for both the company and team members.
It’s important not to think of training as time lost if
done, but as an opportunity lost if it’s not. Inconsistent, infrequent, or an outright lack of training can cost you significant sums in quality of work and employee turnover.
Certify Cleaning Services
If you want to know one very straightforward way to set yourself above the rest, it’s to validate your services through recognized certifications. You’ll not only have a way to highlight your expertise and credentials, but provide your team with the training they need to do a good job.
There are two types of certifications you can pursue:
- Tactical
- Strategic
Tactical certifications are the most commonly pursued. They enhance and qualify skills such as how to polish a floor, how to clean a toilet, and other skills required to clean effectively and efficiently.
Strategic certifications are focused on building, enhancing, and qualifying those soft skills which are needed to effectively lead, manage, and train others.
Only around 5 percent of people in the cleaning industry have tactical certifications. That number drops down to less than 1 percent for strategic certifications.
A surprisingly few amounts of people are trained by industry standards and certified, opening this up as an opportunity to validate your leadership to both your customers and your team.
Elevate Your Standard of Clean
A standard is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a level of quality or achievement that is considered acceptable or desirable.”
What are your current cleaning standards? Do your team members know exactly what is required before they can check off that a job is done? Do all team members perform tasks the same way and to the same quality?
ISSA has recommended standards, great training, and certification programs, as well a large network of experts who help to continue to grow and improve cleaning standards across the entire Jan-San industry. It can be difficult to establish your own standards, especially without knowing anything about what others are doing, but ISSA makes it easier.
Many use the ISSA standards as a starting point or framework to form their own organizational standards. This is because each business is different and that competitive edge comes from the way your standards and the needs of your customers come together.
Continue to elevate your standard of clean by pursuing ongoing training, educating your team, and earning certifications. You may find yourself able to contribute your knowledge in more ways than expected to help the industry grow.
About Our Guest(s):
Mark Warner
National Sales Manager - Bullen Companies
Mark Warner is the National Sales Manager for the Bullen Companies in Folcroft, Pennsylvania, and has served as the Education Manager for ISSA’s Cleaning Management Institute.
Mark’s responsibilities have included running training seminars throughout the country and further developing the Certified Custodial Technician programs. As an industry professional for over 30 years, a past member of the ISSA Board of Directors, and a CIMS Certified Expert, Mark is the expert to talk to about education, training, and certification in the Jan-San industry.