67. The Ultimate Guide to Hiring and Retaining Staff to Grow Your Cleaning Business
Finding the right staff is crucial for the success of your cleaning business.
The quality of your staff impacts both your clients and the operation of your business.
We used to struggle finding the right staff in my business.
But, I’ve interviewed guests on The Growth Lab podcast that have had great success with their recruitment.
They’re success boils down to 4 things:
Staff Avatars
Effective Job Descriptions
Interviews + Background Checks
Training + Development
👇🏾 Listen: Struggling to differentiate your cleaning business?
THE BIG IDEA
Staff Avatars
Do you have a profile for your ideal staff member?
Having one helps you:
Market your business with the right messaging;
Target and attract the right type of person; and
Understand where you need to advertise.
Josh Melton introduced me to the concept of creating staff avatars.
His business, Athens Cleaning, has three staff avatars. They outline the type candidates they’re looking:
A young, student type who wants to earn a little bit of extra money to get through college;
A 35-40 year old mum who wants to have a break from the kids for a few hours a day and earn some extra savings; and
Someone in retirement who wants to stay active and top up their pension instead of sitting around at home.
With these 3 avatars, Josh is able to create the right messaging and advertise in the right places to attract the right candidates.
Having staff avatars has increased his success rate with hiring and building the right team.
Effective Job Descriptions
Once you know the type of candidate you want for your business, you need an effective job description.
When you write a job description, tell a story.
Give some background about your cleaning business, it’s values and the work environment.
Here’s a great example I saw on LinkedIn.
The ad is for an admin role at a cleaning business. What I like is the context it gives you about the business.
Next, you need to outline the responsibilities and qualifications required for the role.
Be specific about the cleaning tasks involved and mention any specific skills or experience required.
Detail the pay, holidays and other benefits available.
Here’s an example I spotted on Twitter.
It’s simple, provides a little bit of context and set out the important information.
A good job description, targeted at the right candidates helps you attract those that will be a good fit for your business.
The Interview Process
Martin Riley explained that each step of the application process needs to be a test.
Simple ways to filter out if the candidate has the right skills before your interview them.
Make sure there’s a detailed application procedure to follow.
If they don’t pass this first phase, you don’t even see them.
Invite those that pass to a phone interview. Get them to call you and see what happens when you speak on the phone.
Are they able to communicate effectively? Do they listen?
If they can’t be bothered to call, they’re no good. They can’t be relied on.
After a successful call, that’s when you invite them to an interview. Prepare a list of relevant questions that focus on their experience and work ethic.
Listen to the responses and observe their behaviour during the interview.
Are they professional? Do they pay attention to detail? How are they’re face to face communication skills?
If they pass the interview, invite them to a test clean. Get them to work with your team and see how they interact and follow instructions.
Are they trainable? Do they work well in a team?
If they pass the test clean, the last step is getting background checks and references.
Speak with previous employers and confirm their employment history, work ethic and reliability.
Do they have a clean record and are they trustworthy?
Testing at each step of the interview process helps you hire the right candidates for your cleaning business.
Training and Development
Once you’ve hired the right candidate, onboarding and training are key.
You need to provide them with proper training and ongoing development opportunities.
That starts with developing the right resources, including:
SOPs
Job forms and checklists
A staff handbook; and
Training schedule
A good onboarding program has several components:
First day orientation. This includes simple things like how to handle breaks, what to wear on the job and other day to day requirements.
Policies and procedures. Presenting the staff handbook and clarifying things like holiday requests and sick leave.
Live training. Show new staff how you expect them to clean. Everything form dry & wet work to showing them how to vacuum and mop.
Make sure new staff have a good understanding of the standards of the business and your expectations.
After onboarding, you need to develop staff with an ongoing training program.
Host monthly/bi-monthly training sessions around one topic. Health & safety, chemicals, cleaning methods etc.
Keep the sessions around 15-30mins, short and digestible
Developing a training program is an investment in your business. Depending on the size of your budget, there are different options.
In the early years of your business, online training may be more affordable. Once you reach critical mass, hiring a trainer and developing your own training program may be a better option.
Either way, the investment will be worth it.
Trained Cleaners = Better Service = Client Satisfaction = Retained Clients = Increased Lifetime Value = Revenue Growth
As your business grows, you have more resources to develop staff and increase longterm ROI.
And it all begins with knowing who you want to hire and taking the time to find the right people for your cleaning business.
Content to check out
In this week’s episode of The Growth Lab podcast, I have a chat with James Church about raising investment for your cleaning business. Listen here.
Prefer watching over listening? Check out The Growth Lab podcast on YouTube.
NEED MORE HELP?
Email me with the growth strategy for your cleaning business. The more details you provide, the more personal I can make my response.
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Thanks for reading!
Matt @ The Growth Lab
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