Looking For a Better Way to Manage, Track, and Train Your Cleaning Crews in The Field?
Even with time in short supply, it’s still essential to manage and train your team. While dedicated onboarding and training time is necessary, it’s not unusual for additional commercial cleaning crew training to happen on the job. Luckily, cleaning crew management software can help facilitate this training.
There’s more to it, though. Training is certainly part of managing a cleaning crew. However, scheduling, time tracking, and placement are all vital aspects of keeping your commercial cleaning business running smoothly.
Bid tracking, to-do lists, cleaning checklists, supply inventory, timekeeping… it’s all here. Janitorial Manager can help you organize all your cleaning operations. Schedule a free call with Janitorial Manager to learn more.
Features of an Ideal Cleaning Crew Management System
What are the ideal features and benefits of cleaning crew management software? Every commercial cleaning business has a favorite, but here is a small list of what we would consider a must-have to help your business run efficiently.
- Real-time task tracking. Ever wonder where your team is on a job? How much do they have left to do? Did they run into a problem? With real-time task tracking, you know exactly where things stand on a job. This gives you an easy way to tell if your team is running behind, ahead, or right on schedule.
- Seamless communication. Good communication is essential. However, distance, location, and different languages can all be barriers to good communication. There’s an easy way to work around all of those issues, though. Cleaning crew management software like Janitorial Manager is built to improve communication. With location-based messaging, translation, and the ability to message one person or your entire crew at once, you never need to worry that your message isn’t getting through.
- Scheduling. Powerful crew scheduling are key features that help take the stress out of planning your weeks. With cleaning crew management software, you can relax knowing your clients are covered.
- Time tracking. Time tracking is a great way to get a grip on your business finances in more ways than one. Time tracking helps prevent issues like buddy clocking and overpayments. But it gets even better. Combined with task-tracking elements like Scan4Clean, time tracking can help you pinpoint how long different jobs take, so your bids get more accurate and more profitable.
- Progress tracking. Along with managing your cleaning crew, an ideal janitorial software system also lets you track your business progress. For example, Janitorial Manager has built-in bidding calculators and templates. As you bid on contracts, you can track those bids to see what’s working, what isn’t, and where you could improve your approach.
Benefits of Streamlined Cleaning Crew Management and the Right Software
The right cleaning crew management software is an investment that improves all aspects of your commercial cleaning business. For starters, the right cleaning business software is incredibly cost-effective. How?
Let’s start with one of the biggest business expenses: payroll. You can’t skimp on payroll. You need a cleaning crew or you won’t have a cleaning service. And paying people a fair wage also helps reduce employee turnover.
However, prioritizing payroll doesn’t mean you have to skip working efficiently or effectively. For example, buddy clocking can cut into your budget substantially.
If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it’s when one employee is late (or absent altogether) and another clocks them in. Essentially, someone gets paid even though they aren’t there to do the job. That’s bad enough, but the problem gets worse when you realize this is likely a two-way street. It’s rarely just one person who is clocking in an absent coworker. After all, that coworker has to return the favor.
That’s not all, though. Not only are you paying someone for work that they aren’t doing, but you’re also down a person. So everyone else is picking up the slack, which, for obvious reasons, leads to poor morale. Alternatively, the work isn’t getting done, which also leads to unhappy customers.
The solution? How about cleaning crew management software that includes time tracking? Better yet, how about software that uses facial recognition or geo-location to clock employees in and out? That feature alone can give you a huge return on your investment.
These issues don’t always come from an ill-intentioned place, either. People sometimes forget to clock out. They’re rushing to the next location, or they have a lot on their mind and they just forget.
But cleaning crew management software is more than just a time clock. There are numerous ways you can decrease your costs with the right software. For instance:
- More accurate supply inventory, so you don’t over-order.
- More accurate product inventory, so you know if your team is using too much (or too little) cleaning solution.
- Integrations with third-party payroll providers, such as ADP or Paychex, limiting mistakes in payroll processing.
- Better scheduling, so you have the right people in the right locations, making each job run more efficiently.
- Keeping equipment maintenance schedules, so you don’t have to worry about equipment breakdowns.
How Does Software Really Improve Efficiency?
This all sounds great, but will the right software really make that big of a difference? Are there specific ways it can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your commercial cleaning business?
Let’s start with cleaning crew messaging. How much time do you spend trying to track down the right person at the right location to relay an important message? One approach is to look up the schedule, figure out where your field supervisor is, and then dig up their number to send them a text. But what if they aren’t at the location you think they are? You need to go back and find someone who is there, get the message to them, and hope they notify the team.
Of course, it’s important to get your message to the right people. Updates regarding checklists, customer requests, schedule changes, and so on are vital in keeping your team on task. But with cleaning crew management software like Janitorial Manager, you don’t have to go through all those steps to reach your team.
Location-based messaging eliminates all of those steps. You can automatically send your message to everyone in a specific location. Or you can message the person you need to, all from the same app.
Let’s move beyond messaging and communications, though. Because that’s only one place the right janitorial software can help you improve efficiency. Training is another standout application for janitorial software.
There are a few ways you can use software to improve employee and team training. At the highest level, the scheduling features make it easy to plan ahead for training days. And with an employee portal, you can file all your team certifications in one place. So you don’t need to search through file cabinets to recall when it’s time to update or find proof of certifications.
As nice as that is, we can dig a little deeper and find some additional, real-time training capacities with janitorial software. Traditionally, unless you were on-site, you didn’t have a great way to know if there was a common mistake that your entire team was making. Nor could you easily tell if you had one employee who consistently made the same error.
Further, you might estimate the time on a particular job only to find out your team has to skip tasks in order to meet that time. That throws off your supply costs, potential profits, and it doesn’t make your client too happy.
With cleaning crew management software, all that guessing is a thing of the past. With your team scanning in and out of locations with QR codes, using a checklist that’s updated in real-time, and supply inventories, you can know exactly what’s happening on the ground. Additionally, you can track tasks to specific employees, giving you the information you need to improve your training.
Your inventory remains steady. Your estimates and bids become more accurate. You can track inspections with checklists and images. Your cleaning business grows more efficient, while your team can do their job knowing that their hard work is, in fact, noticed.
Is it Easy to Implement with My Crews?
This is always a good question to ask yourself before you make changes to your operation. The last thing you want to do is make the job more challenging. The best janitorial software comes with a robust onboarding and training plan. Even then, the software still needs to be user-friendly.
Software like Janitorial Manager excels in this department. The built-in JM Connect app improves team communication, makes it easier to clock in and out, quickly refer to checklists and instructions, and document and validate the work they do. Additionally, the app offers language translation, so everyone can understand and communicate more easily with one another.
Once your team understands how much easier cleaning crew management software will make their work, they’ll be onboard.
In the busy commercial cleaning industry, time comes at a premium. The right software can help you maximize that time, making it easier than ever to conduct quick, impromptu training, track your inventory, organize inspections, and streamline your schedule.
Keep up with your vendors, customers, staff, schedules, and checklists. Learn more today with a discovery call and find out how to make your building services efforts more efficient, cost-effective, and better for everyone!