If your janitorial company’s average employee turnover rate matches the industry average of 200%, you likely understand how much of a disruption this can be for both you and your customers.
As with any service-based business, it’s the people who work for you that can make or break your reputation. And if you’re constantly replacing staff there is a high chance your clients will feel the inconsistency of service. In fact, janitorial businesses and commercial cleaners lose an estimated 55% of their customers based on inadequate cleaning practices. Meaning employee retention is vital to growing your customer base.
Not only that, but a high janitorial employee turnover rate is expensive. If you’re replacing your entire janitorial staff up to two times every year, the amount of time and money you’re spending on hiring and training new employees takes a big bite out of your profits and limits your company’s growth.
So it’s not surprising that when the owners of janitorial and commercial cleaning companies are asked about the biggest challenges they face, holding on to their cleaners is often at the top of the list.
While not all cleaners turnover because they’re dissatisfied with their job, many of them do cite this as their number one reason. So if you’re noticing that you’re constantly hiring new cleaners for your janitorial business, it’s time to find out why.
One place to start is by asking the people who are leaving. They can provide great insights into how you can improve as an employer. For example, they might experience less stress with clearer communication, by never running out of supplies so they can get their job done on time, or set up flexible schedules that better fit their needs.
Understanding why your turnover rate is high is the first step. The next step is setting up the processes to address these issues. While you can do this manually, you’ll quickly find that as your business grows, so does the complexity of your operations. Meaning manual solutions will quickly start to take up hours of your day. This is where janitorial software shines.
Janitorial Software Designed Around Communication & Employee Retention
As someone who’s juggling dozens of responsibilities simultaneously to keep your janitorial business moving forward, it’s a smart move to use operational software, like Swept, that can support your company's scalability. It will give you an advantage over other commercial cleaning companies by simplifying a lot of time-consuming tasks and—even better—it creates a system that streamlines critical pieces of your business such as scheduling, task management, and communication.
Swept has everything you need to make communicating with your staff and clients easy—from cleaner scheduling to client messaging. The software even has a translation feature so you can communicate with your staff in more than 100 languages.
A work schedule should benefit both the employer and the cleaner. When you consider the needs and preferences of your staff and build those considerations into your schedule, your cleaners appreciate it. Swept’s janitorial app makes scheduling a breeze and provides a simple way to communicate scheduling changes quickly. Employees can log into the app to see their upcoming shifts and get notified in real-time if there are any changes.
Checklists and Instructions – Routine tasks don’t typically get forgotten, but when a client has a special request or requires a change to their service, Swept makes it simple to communicate those changes—and in up to 100 different languages. Meaning your team can work and communicate in their native or preferred language. The software also allows your cleaners to send and receive photos to get visual direction and confirm task completion. That level of communication makes working for you an enjoyable experience for your cleaners and sets a clear expectation as to what is needing to be achieved at the very start of their shift.
Swept was designed with cleaners in mind. That’s why we’ve included a mood reporting feature so you can stay connected with your staff and know how they’re feeling about their job. This simple check-in can help you catch small issues before they become big problems—or the reason a cleaner leaves the company.
You can also pull trends through the Reports page to see if there are any themes of employees being satisfied or dissatisfied at specific locations. This gives you an opportunity to keep a finger on the pulse and put out any fires before they start!
When your team members are working towards specific tasks, it helps to set clear goals for everyone. With Inspections, employees are able to get feedback on their cleans from Supervisors and see not only where there is an opportunity for improvements, but what they should keep doing! Providing feedback directly to your employees not only increases employee engagement but also improves focus and results.
Can software really impact your janitorial business turnover rates?
Swept Customer Review | Renee Studiner | Covert Cleaning INC
Reducing Janitorial Turnover Rates
Unlike a lot of other scheduling software in the market, Swept was created for commercial cleaning businesses. This means every feature and functionality has been created specifically to resolve a challenge that you are faced with daily. Incorporating Swept into your day-to-day gives your cleaners a tool to stay connected, keep on top of tasks, and even stay on top of inventory so the supplies they need are always available.