Late again? Find out how excessive tardiness brings your business down. And learn what you can do about it.
Your customers rely on you and your team to show up on time and get the job done. They also understand that sometimes circumstances make you late, despite your best efforts. A road shuts down for a water line break. A fire alarm at your last job put you behind schedule. Excessive tardiness, however, is another matter.
When your team shows up late, that can put your clients in a tough position. They may need work done before their doors open so they can start on a different project. One of their employees may be waiting to give you building access.
It’s more than just an inconvenience, though. When members of your team are consistently late, that excessive tardiness is a reflection of your business.
From workloading to maintenance to schedules, Janitorial Manager can help you organize your entire operation. Schedule a free call with Janitorial Manager and make your work easier and more profitable.
What “being late” really means
There is a difference between running late and consistent, significant lateness. It’s unlikely that anyone will fault you or anyone on your team for running a few minutes behind. And if something comes up, most people are pretty forgiving about lateness as long as there is a good reason and you let them know.
However, the situation is different when your entire team or someone on your team is regularly late. That sends a message. If it’s one team member, other employees may feel slighted and like they can’t count on the regularly late person.
Worse, though, your clients might feel like they can’t trust you. And if your entire team is late, your clients get the message that their business doesn’t matter.
If you or your team don’t care enough to be respectful of your client’s time and money, they have no incentive to keep you on.
Why are people late?
There are numerous reasons that your team or a team member is late. Again, though, if we’re talking about frequent, excessive tardiness, we can’t correct the problem unless we know why it’s happening.
Is your team overscheduled? Do they have enough time to complete their checklist and make it from one location to another? Are they working shorthanded? These are logistics problems that won’t get fixed without a schedule or payroll adjustment.
Are your clients asking for extras? Is your team doing more work than you’re contracted for? This may be a situation you have to discuss with your team or your clients.
Is it a personnel issue? Some people just don’t understand the importance of arriving on time. You may need to sit down with them and explain how lateness impacts your business, your clients, and other employees.
No matter the reason, excessive tardiness stresses your team, leads to cutting corners, and results in unhappy clients. What can you do?
5 Ways to end excessive tardiness and get your team to work on time
What can you do about excessive tardiness? Again, the solution is partially dependent on the reason. That said, there are some steps you can take to prevent or correct the issue.
1. Improve your workloading. One way to prevent excessive tardiness is to improve how you schedule and distribute the work. For example, you might estimate that section A of a facility will take one hour to clean. However, if the reality is that it takes closer to an hour and 15 minutes, your team is already running behind.
2. Verify payroll hours. Issues like buddy punching ruin your efficiency and productivity. Not only that, but you’re paying someone for work when they aren’t there. So your timing and payroll take a hit, too. One solution is to adopt facial recognition or geofencing for clocking in and out. That way, you know who is on-site and when they are there.
3. Improve communication. Communication is vital for any business, and it’s especially helpful if your team services multiple locations. With good communication, you can keep up with any obstacles your team encounters. You can let clients know if you’re behind schedule. And you can handle any difficulties that arise with scheduling and other issues that may impact the timeliness of your operations.
4. Use QR codes. QR codes, such as our Scan4Clean technology, impact everything from workloading to payroll to communication. These codes allow you to partition facilities into sections. Employees scan in and out of each area, so you know precisely how long it takes to complete the checklists in each area. With that information, you can improve your workloading and ensure payroll is accurate. And since the codes also allow employees to comment and upload images, you can also improve your team’s communication.
5. Run reports. As much as we would like to believe everyone is doing their best, some people just don’t get the importance of showing up on time. This tends to be an individual issue more than a team issue. Still, it hurts your business and it creates a challenge for other employees who have to pick up the slack. Still, we want facts and data when dealing with personnel issues. With technology like QR codes and better systems for clocking in and out, we can run reports that give us detailed information about an employee. With these reports, you have evidence of an employee’s excessive tardiness, disciplinary action already enacted, and you have the information you need to take any next steps.
As always, we’re happy to help you manage all of this. Software tools like Janitorial Manager bring the benefits of technology to your commercial cleaning operation. Workloading is easier and more accurate, communication (even in multiple languages) is a breeze, and you can run reports with the click of a button.
Get labor and supply costs under control with powerful scheduling, time-tracking, workloading, and inventory tools. Get started now with a free call to Janitorial Manager to learn how mobile-friendly janitorial software can help you streamline your business.