The Scrub S2E3: Tips to Retain Rockstar Employees for your Cleaning Business

Improve your organization's marketing and sales as well as management and field operations by tuning in to the Scrub.

Welcome everyone, to episode three of the Scrub. I'm your host, Kaden Hutchins. Alongside with me, our VP at Clean Intelligence, Samuel Clayton.

What up, everyone?

And we are super excited to be on this episode today. And just a quick recap of last week, I guess. Not last week, the last episode a couple weeks ago, we had our porcelain thought, which was kindness and respect for everyone and trying to make sure that that definitely goes through the industry. As far as learning from COVID being kind to one another, as you know, levels of stress are a little bit higher than normal. We also had a guest, Dave Thompson, and what an incredible opportunity that was to get to know him. And talking about the engaged employee, he dropped a couple of awesome truth bombs. The difference between education and training. If you are interested, go check out episode two if you haven't already. It's definitely worth the watch to learn from him, so for sure. So anyways, today's episode. Sam, why don't you go and take it away?

So we've been focusing a lot on the importance of taking care of employees and what it might take to keep them around. And we're going to expand on that a little bit more. Again, Dave talked about engaged employees and what that that means and providing education beyond just the training. They need to understand why what they're doing is valuable and then how to do it better. Right? And so there's that, that twofold education and training. But what we're going to really focus on today is what post Covid has brought to anybody who has a business. And that's the great resignation, right? Employees are leaving for better places to work. And this is across every, every type of industry that's out there. The great resignation is a thing that is happening currently. And so what we want to talk about today, because it is a big topic of discussion, is that in the Jansan industry, it's been something that has been an issue for years before COVID where it is decades, it's difficult to retain employees with the work that's being done from a service provider standpoint. And so we want to talk about that a little bit and see if we can help you out a little bit. We, we want to talk about how employee retention is really key to an organization's competitiveness, the productivity of your organization and the culture. Without the right talent in place, it's hard to grow a company. Kaden, you and I, we, we understand this. Like with clean Intelligent. We. I've been reading the book Good to Great and it talks a lot about putting the right people in the right seats on the right bus heading in the right direction. Right. And there are a lot of rights and you got to find them. And it starts with finding that right employee and then figuring out what they're, you know, what they're good at and what they're going to succeed at and how it's going to help that bus move along and get to, to the point of success. Right. So getting the right talent in place is an important piece. And then kind of going with Dave, Tom, Dave's suggestion of the educating and the training. Now here's a crazy stat and then we can start to kind of break this down a little bit. Employee turnover in Jansan averages 200%. So that percentage is super high. And anybody listening who is in that industry does understand that it's very difficult to retain employees. So my question to start us off, Kaden, why does retention matter at all? Like, why is it important to do what you can to retain?

You know, it's when looking at our experiences and just saying, hey, let's talk about the human being aspect. We're all wanting to be appreciated, to have fulfillment and that's just like foundation of our happiness in life, right. Is to be recognized, to be seen. And then you take that to a industry that is rarely recognized for their contribution to a vital aspect of our economy. Right.

Especially after Covid, that definitely became even more apparent.

Being healthy, it's, it's no wonder that, you know, it's, it's not because necessarily the skill set, there's. Yeah, I understand that being a cleaner is definitely an entry level job and you, you learn the skill and you go and get educated and training. Right. And you be mentored by leaders. But there's, there's an aspect that, you know, there are people that, that do this job and there's a sense of what they do that they're passionate about, they love it and they stick around in the industry and that they actually leave to go to go to another cleaning job. And there might be a little bit better pay there, but there's also companies that just pull in talent and retain their cleaners much longer than others. And I would argue that pay isn't the number one reason why they're retaining them. Right. That pay matters. But their team is able to stick around because of employees being appreciated, letting them know that they're seen, that they're being part of doing something that matters. And you can't just leave it up to the employee to be like, oh yeah, you know that. So just remember that.

Right, right, right.

It's constantly, I mean, we're in a, we're in a different industry as far as SaaS and the technology sector, but we have to do the same thing. Right. Constantly reaffirm the value that Summer provides. Which is why we have core values. Right.

Yeah.

As a company, it's constantly acknowledging people that represent our core values or on a constant. We have a dedicated channel, Slack Channel, that is constantly giving shout outs to employees that just showcase our core values in a small moment or even a big moment. Right. And I think that that all leads to retention. And kind of going back to your question, Sam, of why all that matters is because retention is one of the key drivers of business to keep your expenses at a manageable level. Because employee turnover is expensive, in fact. So Sam, just, you know, remember the other day we were eating, we went out to lunch with some team members and I showed you that post from LinkedIn.

Yeah.

That I hadn't really thought about it before. So Cleantelligent was, you know, has been diving into their sales side of the organization and investing a lot in sales. And one of the posts was talking about the opportunity cost of sales, in particular of a seat on the account, or not even the account executive team, just a member of the sales team in general, when a seat is vacant, how much opportunity costs are being lost? And this article pointed out it was like $160,000 per month for the amount of revenue that the business is losing because they don't have someone in that spot. And while that sales, it just, it made me think of the concept of not having enough cleaners to service an account. Right. How much does that cost, the opportunity cost of a company, is it going to affect the ability to retain that account, to service, to make them happy, to have them be productive? And not even on the client side is the actual individual cleaner. How much extra load are they taking on? Because you don't have enough people in their seats that are being taken care of, appreciated. The rest of the team starts feeling that pain, right. That, that level of pressure that kind of makes them like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ditch out and go to a company that has this more under control. And so it's. Turnover is expensive in many different aspects.

The. I was reading an article from Apollo Technical and it says that it costs an employer an average of 33% of an employee's yearly salary for their exit and so knowing that, geez, that's, that's one third of that person's salary that has to be expected to like get them out and, and moving and getting somebody to replace them. And with a 200% turnover that's, you know, for everyone lost, you have two or every one that's gained, two are lost. Right. It's, it's insane. So it does matter. Understanding that statistic and where you're at with retention when it comes to your employees is huge. So knowing why some of those things are happening. You mentioned some of them, Kaden. Like the lack of recognition, the, the low wages. I mean a lot of people are leaving because it's, it's an effort of where the location is, right? The, the training and, and the accountability that is or isn't there. No incentives, no benefits, other job opportunities. This one's huge. Hating the boss, poor management practices, right? When people feel like it's not together, they're going to go find something that feels more structured, safe. A place where they know that they can, you know, be rewarded and recognized for their effort. Now you also mentioned that these individuals don't really get a lot of credit for what they do. The frontline cleaners. And we're seeing more and more that they're being seen as essential workers, which is great. And their work is being more recognized every day after Covid especially. But how, how do we help our, like how do you as building service contractors, in house service providers, how do you as the employer make your employees feel valued in this undervalued industry? For me, to answer my own question, I think it does come to understanding what, where their, their level of accountability and responsibility is. If they have a certain amount of work that's given to them, help them see how their work is translating and what type of value is being provided. So even if they don't necessarily hear from the customer that are, that they're helping and serving, right. You can still help as the employees direct report manager, employer. Right. Help them see through data and analytics that hey, this is actually really valuable stuff and you are able to do this and it's really translating into good things for the business and that relationship. Any other thoughts on that, Caden, with regards to how do we help the undervalued feel more valued in this industry?

A couple things stood out as you were talking. One was metrics. Often the business impact of some employees, they like don't, they don't recognize how that impacts the organization, that hey, I'm actually contributing. They might actually just look at it. Like, dude, I cleaned the restroom for six hours today. Yeah, like, it's just, I'm just doing my job. My head's down. I'm just, you know, and if there were. And there are organizations that do they do this. It's just there's so much that comes when you, when you educate someone on their impact. Right. How much they're driving business productivity and, and things like that and, and to make it fun. Cleaning is a rugged job, right?

Yep.

And I, I believe that there's opportunities for employers to make it more fun from a team aspect, team unity. There's, there's levels of connection between co workers that just, that make it fun competitions. There was. I don't remember if it was a customer or just a story I saw on LinkedIn. This was forever ago. But they, they hide. I don't remember what is like gold tickets or gold coins or whatever.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I saw that quite a bit ago. But it was just like, just something small but like inconspicuous places. They stick things to make sure that one. It's to the benefit that they're getting in the hidden places that maybe aren't looked at a lot, but they're always looking for like these hidden gems. Right? Yeah. To, to clean and, and then just like putting a $25Amazon gift card to the winner of the week.

Right.

Who collected the most, whatever. Anyway. So just there's different aspects of making people enjoy their work that it's just not this mundane. I gotta go clean and no one cares about me, no one sees me. That can totally be changed. And again, going back to those metrics, like sharing what their business impact is, that, hey, this building's performance, we've increased our contract size because we are cleaning so well. Like being able to pull that back to the frontline cleaner and say like, hey guys, we just did another million dollars a year in this massive contract. It went from 4 million to 5 million because we were able to expand our scope because of the work you guys are doing and showing that and you know, honestly sharing a little bit of that love. Right? Be like, so for everyone that's servicing this account because you guys are doing so well and we're expanding our scope, everyone's getting X, Y and Z raise. You know, it's just, it's one of those things to recognize that your business doesn't exist without your employees, without your people on the front line. And if you're large enough to no longer have leadership and management and supervisors having to always step in for a cleaner when they don't show up or whatnot. Like, go back and think about those days when you didn't have a big enough team size that, hey, in the end I had to be the one getting up at 2am because the crew didn't show up. And like, no one really wants to go back to that. You want to have an organization that's sufficient and provides the needs of your accounts and that people, people come to work because they love it. They don't have to love the fact that they clean toilets, but they can love working for you. Right, Right. And that's what will keep them. Yeah.

And that kind of plays off of what Dave shared with us last. Last time was the, the need for someone who's engaged. And you get them engaged when you have practices and structure in place that helps them feel like, hey, we, you got this and we have this figured out. And so there's a big, there's a big need for us as leaders in our organizations to help people feel like they have the right knowledge and the right direction and the right vision and clarity. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit, but I guess what, what steps and programs can help increase employee retention when it comes to helping these people feel like, hey, I, I am engaged because you've given me these things. I think one of the first ones is good onboarding. Caden, you and I have brought on some new people recently at Clean Intelligent, and we're realizing that our onboarding and training program is not really there as best as it could be. And so we're, we're trying our best to onboard people more effectively. It's a battle, but any thoughts on that? Kane, I know you've been working pretty hard this week on this because we got a couple people started on Monday.

Yeah. So the level of onboarding has always fluctuated depending upon the position. Right ones that are easier to handle or whatnot. And for me, it's been the fact that spending time building processes and documentation with HR that says, hey, here's. Here's where we're going to have a rule and here's where we're going to say the employee has judgment and, like, building all those out. I don't create a culture at Clean Intelligent. Our company does collectively. And the result of, like, listening to all of your employees, even through onboarding, many of them hate reading all the rules because when, when you go through all of these rules of onboarding and not of onboarding, but of like, your job and don't do this, don't do this, do this. It doesn't feel empowering. And so there is a level of like you onboard someone, you're educating them and training them. My advice would be to make your onboarding feel like they decide how they go through onboarding in a level that makes it their ownership of how they're going to apply this principle to their job and to give as much autonomy as possible to the individual. I mean, yesterday, Sam, you and I are talking about a certain policy that I scrapped like 90% of it. It was an old archaic policy with former leadership, a lot of former employees, years and years ago. And I was like, why is this still in here? It doesn't matter. And I'm not the leader that says it had to do with like working in office and like break times and stuff. And we've moved away from that like so far of like letting employees have way more flexibility. And a lot isn't defined on that particular policy. There are policies that you do have to define things out right, but if you can give employees space anywhere to make their own decisions through certain levels of onboarding, like give it to them. It's empowering to say like, hey you, you have a request, it has to come through us. And if you need this supply, I mean this is related to like an office setup and supply. And instead we created a policy that says, hey, you know what, I'm just going to give every employee a budget every single year they have a company divi card, credit card, you know, plug in for divi. If you don't know what divi is, go to get divi.com. it is an incredible tool to give employees a level of empowerment if they're given budgets and whatnot. Anyways.

I will say this, talking about onboarding, one of those statistics that I had come across as well. Supposedly a good onboarding program leads to 69% of employees staying at least three years. So if you can improve how you onboard and bring people into your organization, there's a much better chance. Now that's, that's industry wide, right? That's not just Jansan and obviously it's a much higher rate. But at any rate, good onboarding and training is very important in any industry. We've talked about employee appreciation and, and we also mentioned good management when most people leave, honestly, when it comes to poor management or just a bad boss, that doesn't really show that they care. An article that we've written in the past on our blog is titled Factors that increase Clean Cleaning Employee Turnover.

And.

One of the items we mention is you only pay attention when they want to leave. So as, as leaders, as managers, it's our opportunity to check in with individuals and make sure that they're doing well, how they're feeling about their work. Do they feel like they have guidance and clarity of what they're doing? Do they need training? If so, are you giving them the ability to go receive that training? If that's a possibility. So there's aspects of the management side as well that really plays a factor into individuals, employees wanting to stay or go. So that's. That's a big one. Any final thoughts on this before we move to porcelain thoughts, Kaden?

No, I. I agree. I think you. You hit it on the head. I. I think it's one of those things that just is constantly, always having to be looked at. It never, never goes away. You're never gonna solve it in one day. And if you feel like you did solve it for that day tomorrow, it might change. So just always be willing to be adapting and changing to make sure you're looking out for your employees. Because if you aren't talking to them, there's a chance someone else is a friend, a co worker somewhere else, being like, hey, we love it over here. It's like a party every day. I work for so and so. And then they just up and leave, you know? Right.

Okay. Well, we, we talked a lot about employee retention and some important factors and knowing what that that percentage rate is in your organization in ways that you could potentially enhance that. So really good stuff to end the episode. I've been thinking a lot about this, and it's definitely been a porcelain thought in, at least in the entire month of February. I feel like this point had to keep coming across as I work with both the marketing and the product team here at Clean Intelligent. And today's porcelain thought is the importance of clarity and specifically clarity for employees. In my research of this topic and understanding this a little bit more, I found that there are six human workplace needs that need to be met for someone to feel like they have clarity and that they're moving in a. In a place that's healthy and a good place to work. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna list those out and then kind of provide some understanding or ideas on what I've learned about clarity. So the four core needs before the two fulfillment needs. So there's four core needs, needs that all people seek at a fundamental level at work. There's connection with people. That's an important part Certainty as a result of safety contributions are valued and then clarity of what and how, right? And then the two fulfillment needs, needs that result in meaningful and purpose driven work is challenge and growth and community impact. So really it boils down to who are they working with? Are they safe in their job? Do they feel like they're safe in their job? Are their contributions being valued? Do they know what and how to accomplish their job? Is that, is it challenging but healthy challenge, Right. And do they experience growth in those positions? And then how is it impacting the community? That's their, their individual selves, the teams they work on, the departments they're in, or the company itself that they work for. And I've realized that clarity never faileth you like that. Clarity is critical. If people don't know what, how and why, they struggle to connect with everything else. Right? And so that's just the porcelain thought. Clarity is fundamental in the workplace and every person needs clarity. And if you're an individual contributor to a whole, you got to know how your individual contribution helps the entirety of the company, right? And then how does each and every day that you're moving through connect with what you're trying to do as a collective and providing that clarity on goals, on objectives, the results, the performance, right actions and decisions that are being made. There's often fear behind clarity because it actually gives you more knowledge to put a little more level of accountability and responsibility on you. But once you can get past that fear of clarity and actually use clarity to your advantage as leaders or even as just an employee receiving clarity, you're going to be able to feel more enabled, more excited, more engaged. As Dave tells us in the last episode, all of these things happen because we actually gain clarity of our roles, our purpose, our needs and our wants and what we truly want to succeed. So anyway, that was my porcelain thought. Any thoughts on that, Kaden?

I love it. The why behind the clarity is it helps give a person buy in. Kind of going back to earlier in our discussion today that tie it back to why they are so important that clarity then makes sense because we could provide the clarity that is needed and it won't be a full concept of understanding to them without the why and how they're driving impact. And I, I love it. And Sam, you're right. This last month you've done been, been doing a ton of clarity. Clean Intelligent is working on a new product launch which is really exciting. And clarity has been the number one key piece to the success of all of this. Understanding one another and development and so great job on Sam's part to provide that clarity. But we've seen it firsthand that everything constantly needs to be clarified again and again to make sure everyone's on the same page, and it empowers the team.

So, yeah, absolutely. All right, that's the show. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure you go give us a follow on social media, just leantelligent software. And if you want to be on the show, you can email podcast atsingular podcast cleantelligent.com and we'd love to have you on the show. If you got some insights into how you run your organization or business and how it could potentially help others in this industry, we'd love to have you on the show. So go ahead and shoot us that email. But if there's nothing else, signing off until next time.

Thanks, everyone.

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