The Scrub S2E2: Educating and Engaging Frontline Employees with David Thompson

Improve your organization's marketing and sales as well as management and field operations by tuning in to the Scrub. Welcome to the Scrub, everybody. I'm Sam and alongside me is Caden, president of Clean Intelligent. And we're excited to kick off episode two of the Scrub. Last week, in our episode, our intro episode of season two, we told you that we rebranded the podcast from Be Clean Intelligent to the Scrub. And we're excited to continue to talk about marketing and sales and operations and working with our employees and really trying to figure out best practices of making an organization run more efficiently and effectively and successfully. We also talked about porcelain thoughts where taking care of those individuals is super important. That's going to be a big chunk of our our episode today. And we're excited to include and introduce a guest today. And we'll, we'll talk to him in just a minute. And if you are interested in becoming a guest on the show, you can email podcastleantelligent.com and you have the opportunity to share your experience, your background, and what you do to get your organization moving and being more successful. So let's jump right into it. We don't want to waste any time, right?

Yeah.

We're excited to introduce our guest for today. And let's, let's get rolling.

Let's do it.

David Thompson is the director of the Academy of Cleaning Excellence, an international resource for professional development focusing on educating frontline staff members. Please welcome to the Scrub. Dave Thompson. We are so excited to have Dave Thompson here with us. Has a lot of experience in the Jansan industry and his background. And Dave, welcome to the Scrub. We are so excited to have you. To start off, will you tell our listeners about your journey and how you got started in the industry? What got you where you are today?

Sam, I'm going to have to challenge most people. You're going to have to go back in the calendar just a few years. That history started a long time ago. But yeah, I will say I am celebrating 50 years in the cleaning industry today. This year, the year was 1971, and the principal of the consolidated school in Northeastern Colorado came into my Spanish class, got me out of class and proceeded to tell me there'd been an accident. And I'm like, well, okay, I wasn't a janitor at that time. Was an accident have to do with me so, well, the custodian broke both legs and he says, he tells us that you know where the keys are and what to do with them. I negotiated with him and I've been cleaning ever since.

Wow. So Literally, when, when we're in business and we say, if someone was, was hit by a bus, would you be able to pick up what, where we left off? It sounds like you got the keys literally to the closet and said, let's move.

I mean, yeah, we all start our career in one way or the other. But, you know, the other part of that story, though, Sam, is I got a passing grade in Spanish. My wife is half Mexican and I don't speak any Spanish.

I took a quarter of Spanish in middle school and that's about as far as I went.

And of course, if you want to, if you want to finish the rest of it and you want to book in that whole story, of course. Now I run the Academy of Cleaning Excellence here in Florida. Yes. And I'm always working with Spanish speaking people. And so if I would have actually earned that passing grade, maybe my classes today would be a little better. But, you know, the cleaning industry has been good to me for 50 years. I'm not complaining.

That, that is awesome. And yes, you, you mentioned the Academy and that was something that kind of struck me. And Kaden Caden, you mentioned to me before we reached out to Dave to see if he'd be open and so grateful Dave, that you're on. What kind of caught your eye about Dave and his background and what was going on with him?

Yeah, so, I mean, the aspect that you run the Rockstar Custodian Award was just. I love it. You know, Clean Teligent has been in business for, you know, coming on 20 years in a year or so. And so we've been around a while, but like, just, we view the front line as these awesome rock stars often missed and unappreciated, unfortunately. And, you know, the last couple years with COVID and everything, I feel like that appreciation has gained some, but I don't know if it was on LinkedIn, I don't remember where I saw it, but just seeing the Custodian Award winner for your Rockstar program for 2021, I saw the CleanLink article and I was like, I said, sam, we gotta, we gotta pull Dave onto the show and, you know, just really understand more about the program, highlight it because it's just, it's an awesome thing you're doing. And so that's, that's kind of where I found it.

So can you tell us. Yeah, tell us more about it, Dave.

Yeah, it all came about because, you know, I've been, you know, that's how I started. You know, I started cleaning classrooms and the gymnasium and, you know, Back in those days, of course, we could do those things. You know, I was 14, but, you know, throughout my whole career, you know, I run my own cleaning operation in the Tulsa area back in the mid-80s, you know, I then sold janitorial supplies for 35 years in Missouri. And, you know, all the way through all of that. The reason that we have these products and these processes is because people need a result. And the people that get that result is the people on the front line. And, you know, I've heard throughout my whole career, you know, that we just don't get any respect. And the problem is largely us. We do not demand that respect. People don't know what we do. We're an out of sight, out of mind operation. And so we don't get that. And so the thing is, whenever I started the academy here, my main goal is to champion a frontline worker. I mean, all my courses, We've got over 50 courses now, they're designed to make the frontline person a better educated consumer. And as I always knew, it was all about health. And so all of our courses focus on health of the frontline worker. Keeping them safe, no matter what. That's the main message. So if you keep them safe, then I've always said, if you're going to do something, do it right. And if it's worth doing it right, it's worth marketing. Well, we're doing it right. We have something, but nobody knows what we're doing. So a person sent me a book and I read it and I said, there's the outline I've been looking for. You know, not everything has to come out of my head. And so I worked with the author and I said, I'd like to have the exclusive rights to your program here because I want to make something out of it. What he had done was took the word custodian and gave it nine personality traits. And to me, that struck a chord because before, it's always been a popularity contest. And nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't define who we are for the right reasons. And finally I had something grab hold of that defined it correctly. So we put together the rock star program about four years ago. And to start it off was nominate your rock star custodian. Anybody anywhere in the world can nominate based on those nine traits. So what we do every year is like right now, it's currently going on for 22. You can nominate any custodian other than yourself, of course. I'm sorry, folks, can do it for yourself.

Okay?

And the person that's doing the nomination, then their best advice is to actually write a description of why that person meets that personality trait. We take 10 months worth of nominations, and then we put it out for nationwide vote. We. We pick eight finalists from all of the hundreds come in, and then we put it out for nationwide vote. And so based on the traits and the voting, then we award one every year. We've done it now three years. And I can tell you, gentlemen, there is no better feeling in the world than to bring that person up on that stage that doesn't know what's going on and give them this award and have. I mean, literally hundreds of people that, you know, have voted for these folks. I don't know if you actually got to watch any of the video from Ron Crowley's award presentation this year, but, I mean, hey, the school even had a special song and a cheer for him. I mean, come on, guys. Yeah, you can't buy that. Yeah, that.

That is awesome. Kaden, go ahead.

I was just gonna say I. I go back to. Wasn't, you know, too long ago, but, you know, about 15 years ago, being in high school and the. The custodian was our rock star. Like, every student knew him. We appreciated him. And he also would get you in trouble if you were, you know, he was a. He was a little bit of law enforcement as well, but. But he was a custodian. And, you know, anyways, it's just, it was cool in that video to see the students and, you know, how they recognized all of his efforts and stuff. Really, really awesome to see.

I think one of the other things, guys, is what happens is, you know, whenever we put the nominations out, it's only the person that nominated. And as people are nominated and that, I keep track of that. Whenever they actually go into the finalists, we send them a certificate that says that they have been nominated and they have made it to the finalist. Well, then what we got is we got some pictures coming back from those schools. And then I actually got them on my podcast and interviewed them.

Nice.

And that was the first time they'd ever been on camera or on that. I won't forget this. Harriet up in Chicago worked for a building service contractor, and they even made a QR code for her and posted it on the walls of the building where she worked so people could scan it and vote for her.

Very cool.

I think this is the power of what we have with podcasts and video and stuff like this. We have an ability to speak out now that we've never had before. And as Samuel said, Covid has done some things for us. It has, but we need to keep that going. And that's kind of what this, you know, we now have Pep Talks 22, which is our annual conference that we've put together coming up here soon that, you know, is going to promote. And it's all about the Rockstar program.

That's awesome. Where is Pep Talks? Is it, is it going to be virtual or is it in person right.

Where you're sitting right now?

Right now. Virtual. Love it.

It's that. That's it.

It's a new age, right? That's. That's what we do.

You see new. It's, you know, we, we here at the academy, we had virtual classes going six years ago, but people were reluctant to take it. What Covid did is it forced people to do that. I was ready. I was sitting there. We had everything ready. It was a great, it was a great thing. And so what we're doing is we're just continuing it. So, yeah, Pep Talks 2022 is April 12th. We're going to start at 9:00am in the morning until 9 in the evening. It's not what most people think. This is a talk format. It's not a webinar. It's not a speech, it's not a presentation. It's thought leaders from around the world that we've gathered together that. And a lot of them come on my podcast over the last six years and they're going to have a 15 minute talk and then there will be discussions afterwards. But the Rock Star program is the center of that. And maybe, who knows, you know, whenever we can all meet in person again. Who knows, maybe, maybe we'll have you guys come here and have everybody come here to Orlando for a live conference every year. Rock Star program.

We love Florida. Yeah, you send us the invite.

Not a bad place to go to.

Okay, so. So then, so then it's a date. February of 20. A day, right?

That's right. That's right. A year from now.

There we go.

That's the whole thing, you know, is to give that frontline worker a reason to, to, to push forward. You know, like Ron Crowley, he'd been doing it for 27 years and he's getting that recognition. But if I go back, Nikki, Ms. Nikki that won the first one. And she buys, by the way. I interviewed her here just recently and she said, just remind everybody when you talk about it, I am the first one. She likes that.

There you go.

Never be another first one. But that's right she's only been in it five years, and she's got that recognition and she's got that trophy on her desk, and people know that. And I just think it's great when you can get these whole communities. I think that's the other really interesting part of the Rockstar program is that it's not about being popular, although that's important, and it's a good part. That's not the only thing, I think. Caden, you said you knew the custodian. I go back to. Why did I know where those keys went to? Yeah, I don't know. I just know that that's the way it started. And I think Frontline custodians have a great impact on a lot of people's lives. Then they don't really know it.

Our episode today is all about empowering that Frontline team and making them feel like, hey, I should be motivated to help because people are recognizing. And I mean, even with clean telegen, our mission and vision involves allowing people to prove that, hey, I'm doing good work. And it's helping people feel safer and feel healthier and be healthier. Right. And empowering them, training them, helping them learn how to be rock stars is a critical part to an organization that has frontline cleaners and workers. So, Dave, what is it that you feel janitorial and facility managers can or should do for their frontline employees to help them become rock stars?

You know, I think that goes back, Sam, to exactly why we have the academy here. It's about education. And I'm sorry, I might step on some Thomas here for some listeners, but there is a difference in our industry that we don't recognize, and we try to make a very distinctive difference here. Training is something. And I was taught this by an older guy when I was young, so I'm just repeating what he said at the time. He said, you train a dog, he has four legs. He just does something for a reward. You educate a human. I have two legs and a brain. Treat me like it. I never forgot that. And so what we tried to do here is it's first about educating. And the most popular question we have is, why? Why are we doing what we're doing? And what I learned earlier in my career is that if we really think about why we're doing it and really look at it, there's usually a different way. And you may say it's better, and you may not. I don't know. But I'll say this. If we really look at why we're doing what we're doing, we'll find out in the Castile industry. You know, hey, when was the mop that most people use patented? And why are we still using it today? Yeah, yeah. It's just ridiculous to think that this is the tool of choice. And so when you look at everything and you look at all of these things, gentlemen, then you start going, okay, And I think this is where you come back to what should a building service contractor in house provider do? You have to educate the people that are working for you. I did not say train. You have to educate them. I can only implement what I know. If I do not know it, I cannot implement it. So, folks, I gotta tell you, education is my brain. Training is the skill that, based on what my brain knows. Educate your people first and then train them to follow the education. They will stay with you because they're looking for a solid place to stay. And this is what we don't do in our industry.

That. That is awesome. I love that thought. Like, I. When I think about, like, how. How we. Even with. With quality control and communication, with clean, intelligent, sending that message, right? Like your people need to know. But it's not just training, training to use something, it's educating, giving them the ability to think for themselves and be able to say, yeah, I can handle this now I'm going to use my skill that, yeah, I also potentially have been trained on to go and accomplish the task and provide great service with a smile on my face and go do that day in and day out, which then in turn makes me feel like, yeah, I'm motivated enough, I know what I'm doing. And when you have clarity, that clarity leads to greater excitement in your role and ultimately success. So that's awesome.

Sam, think of this. We've got five generations of people that we deal with. Five distinctive different generational groups that we deal with. When was the last time that you actually educated your frontline technicians on how to deal with those five different generations? Never.

Yeah, good.

But hey, like I say with everything, guys. But I have a course on that. Yeah, yeah. You ask, what should they do? This is what they should do. This is why we have this here. And this is the. All of our courses now are rock star. We have our rock star onboarding, we have our rock star tactician, we have our rock star expert and our rock star master. And this is all to try to get people to realize that if you want rock stars, you have to educate them. I wouldn't say training is optional, but training is secondary.

Very good.

I love that it's one of those things that, as you were just speaking, it was just the idea that the empowerment given to the front lines only comes on their ability to go off of what they know, to be able to make a decision on their own without needing every step of guidance or being told what to do. And that exists in the entire workforce. The more autonomy you give an individual to be experienced and to do the things that they've been educated to do and go off of their knowledge that they've gained. People stick around when they're put in an environment where they're appreciated and they can feel confident in their role. And that applies to all human beings.

Right.

They all want to be appreciated. All five generations are that way now. Some more than others. But that's the root of human communication, of human need. The more that we're needed, and that's through communication and knowledge. That's not through training of skill. Yeah, I heard somebody say that, you know, that training how to use a floor machine or how to use a window washer, how to was the most important thing. And I got to tell you folks, I got to, I'm, you know, sit right here and tell you you're wrong. If that's what you think, that's the reason you're still having the problem. And this is why people are leaving. Why did building service contractors have a 400% turnover? Because they're still skill. They're still looking at the skill. They're not talking about the people. Why do we call it pep talks? People. Engaging people. I love it.

That's.

That's awesome. That is awesome. And that was going to be my final point or question before you hop off. And Dave, thank you again so much for joining the Scrub me and Kaden here today. That insight right there is awesome. But are there any other insights, tips, tricks that you can share with our listeners that would help them better take care of their frontline team? I mean, educating is number one. It sounds like it's number one. And if that's it, that's the nugget. Right. But any, any final thoughts before you, you leave our listeners?

Well, I think, I think that once that you start the education, you start to find out that it happens all the way through. If you, if you think about this, yes, it starts with the frontline people. They're the ones that all of your customers see, whether you're in house or a contractor, it doesn't matter. The first people that everybody sees are those. And Covid brought that about. Dave Porters was A huge thing the last couple of years. And that just proves that that frontline worker is extremely important. They wanted to see. They want to see what are we doing? How are we taking care of things? That's come very visual. I hope that continues because that's needed. And these. These people that are in the front line, if they're educated, they'll know the right words, they'll know the right thing, they'll know what to say. We cannot continue to try to use new technology, new processes, with old thinking. It just doesn't work. And I hear this all the time, well, you know, I can't afford that or we can't change that. You know, we all know what that beating your head against the same brick wall does, right? Yeah, we all know about that. I think the thing here is we just have to continue that education. Don't get just started. It's an ongoing thing. Never, never start. Stop asking why. I guess there's one little final tip, just to ask you guys, what's the most important thing to an organization? What's the most valuable resource to an organization?

I'm going to say the people.

I was going to say, for me, it's my employees, my teammates, and we're all in this together.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with you.

Oh, okay. Here we go. What do you got?

The most valuable resource that an organization has is an engaged employee. Oh.

Taking it up from silver to gold. We just scored on the silver podium, Dave. Dave's taking the gold home.

Dave's taking the gold home.

This is what the Rockstar program is all about. I didn't say anything you were doing was wrong. I. I didn't say it was. But what we're trying to do is improve the program that you have. Why is it people engaging people? Plenty of organizations have people, and plenty of organizations have good people. The problem is they're not engaged. They have to be engaged through knowledge and communication. Once they are, then you know where they stand. They know where you stand, your customer knows where you're at, and then we all can move forward. It's all about. The Rockstar program is all about moving forward and upping that bar, if you will, to the gold podium. I like that.

Nice.

Very good.

Awesome.

Dave, thank you so much. This has been so insightful, so helpful. I know that it's going to be something that people are going to want to listen to. I'm excited for our marketing team to just start pushing this out to people. And if you want to give Dave a follow or go check out the work he's doing Again, Director of the Academy of Cleaning Excellence. He has his podcast Beyond Clean with with Ace. And so go give him a follow. Go see what this Rockstar program is all about. And again, Dave, thank you so much. We appreciate your time.

Not a problem, guys. Just remember, nominate your rock star custodian today. Number 22 has been. Is going right now. So nominate.

I got someone in mind. So awesome. Thank you, Dave.

Appreciate it, Dave.

Bye, guys.

Dave Thompson, everybody. That was awesome. So many insights.

That was so much fun.

It was so much fun. That's why we wanted to get this podcast to be the scrub. Really scrubbing down, figuring out what the insights are like. Caden and I thought we had the answer and he brought it a level above right.

I loved it. I loved it.

That was so great.

He definitely was the Olympian gold in that moment.

Exactly.

And he was bold. You know, he wasn't, he wasn't like, oh, well, maybe I should just let him be right. No, he's like, no, straight up. It's not just the employee, it's an engaged employee. And that, that rings so true. But we're going to end the episode with a porcelain thought. Kaden, what is your porcelain thought of this show?

You know, I'm going to, I'm going to go off. What Dave just dialed it in to take the gold home for that was what does it mean to have an engaged employee? You know, this industry, and even we just talked about it, this industry, especially among the building service contractor network, has such a high turnover and the cost of that turnover. And I get it, we're dealing with frontline employees, you know, obviously, at least minimum wage. But it should be more than just minimum wage. It's one of those things that these aren't high producing careers when it comes to finances. And yet the turnover, they stay in these positions and they eventually find companies that engages them, that cares about them. Everyone, always, even in our own industry, you will always have employees that are going after money. Hey, I want more money. Increase education, go after different careers. You know what? I am a firm believer that you could be happy in your career of choice, regardless of money, as long as it provides the necessities of life. And for you to be able to take the time away from work as well as to receive that engagement. And so for me, the porcelain thought of today is never underestimate the value of an engaged employee because the cost of turnover is too high. The constant resets. Some of these custodians that Dave brought up in the Rockstar program, I go back to, they were the same people in my high school or junior high back in the day that they were there forever. And there's a level of engagement and appreciation that came with that that we as students back in the day would just. We would love on them, literally. It was. It was just the idea that they. They were the rock star of the school. It was outside of teachers and stuff. It was just someone to connect with, you know, and that's just in the school setting, I feel like teenagers and adolescents that are in that environment are a lot better at adults and showing appreciation and being kind, unfortunately. And, you know, if I were to take that from an engaged employee and go to another gold level, it's to always be kind to everyone around you. And we live in a world of such division of opinion, man, if we could just dial in and be kinder to one another and to respect every single aspect of another person's career and choice and show the engagement level and the value that they provide, man, I can only dream of what kind of world we would live in by doing those things and finding a foundation on being kind to everyone around us and to engage people at a level where they know that they are respected and that their opinion matters and that they have the autonomy to do what they know best based off of their education.

So, yeah, and that. That part, the education part, like you think of training versus educating, and I loved how Dave said it. So train, teach. No, educate them to be rock stars, right? Then train them to be rock stars and then make them feel like rock stars for the work they're doing. Show them the love. Like Kaden said, show kindness. Show that you care about them and they're doing a job with you, right? And so make them feel like their work matters and give them the education and the training they need to succeed. All right, that's it. That's the Scrub episode two of season two. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure to follow us on social media cleantelligent software. You can email us podcastleantelligent.com if you want to be a guest on the show like Dave. If you have some mic drops or bombs that just truth bombs that you want to share, come be on our show. We'd love to hear from you, hear what your thoughts are, learn some porcelain thoughts from your point of view, and let's make the world a better place, a healthier, safer, more successful place. With some of the thoughts from today's show. So thanks, everyone.

We'll see you guys.

Three, two, one.