Not all janitorial standards are created equal. Teach new hires your company standards right away to maintain consistency and class in your business.
Your new hires may have experience in the cleaning industry, but that doesn’t mean they adhere to the same janitorial standards as the rest of your staff. They’re competent, and you’re excited to have them on your team, but it’s also important to remember that these new employees are representing your business. That’s why you want to ensure their work is the high quality you, and your customers, expect.
Setting standards with new hires is one way to make sure they understand your expectations. Previous employers may have had different janitorial standards, or perhaps your new hires worked somewhere with minimal organization. Teaching new hires from the beginning empowers them to do their best work, which hopefully leads to impressed clients.
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Setting the standard: Why every commercial cleaning business needs janitorial standards
One of the most effective ways to set cleaning standards is to follow practices set out by the Worldwide Cleaning Industry Association (ISSA). As the oldest janitorial association in the world, ISSA provides benchmarks that enable you to measure the quality of any commercial or industrial cleaning job. They also offer training courses on how to properly clean commercial spaces like offices, hospitals, and schools.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) also sets industry standards that you’ll need to follow to remain compliant with the law. The most important of those is the bloodborne pathogen standard, which sets out procedures for cleaning up blood and other bodily fluids on a job site. This is a critical standard to teach all new employees. Even if they’ve heard it before, a reminder certainly won’t hurt.
Additionally, you can set your own janitorial standards, addressing technique, tasks, and process flow. The easiest way to do this is to start with an established standard to use as a framework for your own.
Once you have your expectations in place, how do you educate your new hires on your janitorial standards? You can send them to a training or certification course, or you can communicate your best practices with an employee handbook. Another idea is to use checklists for each job. This is especially helpful for new hires who may have difficulty remembering the details of your janitorial standards. Using software like Janitorial Manager, you can create checklists and monitor the progress of each job, even from a mobile device. Such technology can be immensely helpful for your new employees, and it helps to maintain consistency across your whole staff.
The benefits of janitorial standards
The most significant benefit of setting cleaning standards for your business is not merely uniformity or even safety (though that is extremely important as well), but satisfied customers. When you set a standard, you can tell your customers what to expect, and they, in turn, can tell you what they expect. Have these conversations with new customers when you bid on a job to make sure that you can meet their needs.
And educating your new employees will also help with customer satisfaction and retention. It helps to ensure that they’ll be thorough and detail-oriented, and it also encourages them to use safe cleaning practices, such as wearing personal protective equipment, staying clear of biohazards, and using cleaning equipment properly. When your customers see that your employees are confident and knowledgable about their work, they’re more likely to appreciate the work your teams have done and they will remain customers for a long time.
New hires have a lot on their plates, but teaching them your janitorial standards the moment they walk in the door should take priority over almost anything else. Make it a part of a proper onboarding, treating the training as another tool for your new team members to use to achieve success and to do the kind of work that pleases not only the clients, but you as well.
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