How to Retain the Best Employees in Your Cleaning Operation

Take these 5 steps if you want to know how to retain the best employees on your commercial cleaning team

It’s no secret that the commercial cleaning industry has a notoriously high turnover rate. Some of that is to be expected, but when you manage to hire an excellent team, you want to keep them around. When you understand how to retain the best employees in your company, everything else is so much easier. 

Think about it. With a solid team, you don’t have to worry that they won’t show up or do the job right. You know they’ll treat your customers like gold. You don’t have to spend the time, energy, and money it takes to continually hire and train new people. When you have good employees, your business runs so much more easily. Here are some ways you can work to keep those excellent employees on your payroll. 

---

Learn how the right janitorial management software can boost retention, streamline your work orders, your supply requests, and much more. Schedule a free call with Janitorial Manager to see how our software can increase your efficiency, manage your costs, and improve your results.

---

Find out how to retain the best employees and keep your cleaning operation running smoothly

If you want to run a successful cleaning team, one of the important pieces in the mix is knowing how to retain the best employees. A handful of good employees can be the difference between your work being manageable and continually running behind and stressed. 

A good janitorial team knows not just how to do the job, but many of the other intricacies of running a cleaning operation. They know when a product isn’t working well, how to make customers feel appreciated, and they take pride in their work. Naturally, when you have these people on your team, you want to keep them. But how?

A good salary is undoubtedly at the top of any list of how to retain the best employees, but there’s much more to it than that. Here are some of the keys to keeping your best employees on the team.

1. Create an Environment of Respect. This might sound simple, but it’s incredibly powerful. People want to feel respected. In the case of a cleaning business, that might mean thanking people for doing a good job. It means ensuring your team has what they need to do a job correctly, from PPE to cleaning products to well-maintained equipment. It means sticking to a schedule, so people know how many hours to expect each week. It can also be scary. Creating a safe and respectful environment for your team might mean you have to fire problematic customers. But when your team knows how much you care about their wellbeing, they’ll be much more likely to stick around. 

2. Don’t Micromanage. This can be tough especially for small business owners & operators, but remember, if you have a solid onboarding and training program, there’s no need to micromanage. More importantly, micromanaging is an excellent way to chase your employees away. 

3. Be Open to Feedback. People need to be able to approach you without the fear of retribution. Whether it’s an idea to work more efficiently or a complaint about a coworker, or frustration with the schedule, you need to be able to hear what your team has to say. 

4. Stay Organized. Your ability to keep things organized might not seem like much of a tip for how to retain the best employees, but think about it from their point of view. They want to show up and do their job. But when they don’t have the supplies they need or the equipment is breaking down, they spend time trying to figure out solutions for problems that shouldn’t be an issue. It’s your responsibility to make sure supplies are ordered, there’s an equipment maintenance schedule, and so forth. Incidentally, if you need help in this department, Janitorial Manager has a full suite of tools to help with everything from bidding to workloading to checklists.

5. Give People the Opportunity to Advance. This can be a tricky retention strategy, as your overall business needs to grow in order for employees to have more opportunities. However, it’s also a proven strategy. And it’s easy to put in place. As your commercial cleaning business grows, there are chances for people to grow into roles as shift supervisors, regional management, and so on. And since these are people you already know and trust, these promotions can make your job easy, too. 

You won’t always be able to keep your best employees on the team. That’s just a fact of the business world. But there is a lot you can do to put the odds in your favor and make your commercial cleaning operation the one that attracts excellent people and encourages them to stay with you.