As Facility Managers we may not think too much about high janitorial turnover, after all, it is our cleaning company’s staff, not ours. However, high turnover from your office cleaning company can spell disaster for your facility. Let’s look at some of the ways it can impact you:
A Reduced Quality of Work: A revolving door of employees means that each new person that enters your facility is less familiar with the specific needs of your building and is less trained to carry out the necessary tasks. It stands to reason that new employees are usually less efficient and more wasteful because they lack mastery.
Increased Cost to You: High turnover has some hard costs attached to it that will invariably be pushed to you. The process of hiring, training and screening new employees is expensive and this will be reflected in your cleaning bill.
Safety Concerns: Screening is an important step in making sure that the people that enter your building are safe and trustworthy. The higher the turnover, the more likely your commercial cleaning company isn’t doing their due-diligence and properly screening their new employees and staff.
If you are paying a high price for cleaning, high janitorial turnover will make it substantially less likely that you are getting your money's worth. Don’t get suckered into paying more for less. There are professional and reputable office cleaning companies out there with turnover rates significantly lower than industry averages. When looking at prospective companies, inquire about turnover and, remember, no matter what the quote, high turnover from your office cleaning company and a revolving door of new hires will end up costing you in the long run.
Janitorial and commercial cleaning jobs are often thankless and it can be easy to see why the industry has a high turnover rate. Still, when companies exacerbate the normal problems you find in lower-skilled employment by failing to provide competitive wages, you are certainly going to find yourself in the middle of all the problems turnover brings. Lower-skilled jobs are notorious for an overall high turnover, the janitorial industry has a turnover rate of nearly 200%. However, experienced, professional companies understand what can be achieved with a lower rate and actively work to reduce their employee turnover despite the challenges experienced industry wide. Is your current office cleaning company doing enough to keep good people and end the revolving door of people in and people out of your facility?
We’ve shown statistics on the janitorial and cleaning industries high rates of employee turnover, but that doesn't mean that every company suffers in the same way. A solid, professional janitorial contractor and cleaning company in Michigan is mindful of many things in their organizations including technological advances in the building services industry, ongoing training, management systems to insure accountability and responsiveness, recognition and reward programs-- all created to keep their teams operating efficiently.
Companies that exceed the industry standards put their employees through comprehensive training programs to deliver on their promises. These companies understand the benefit of training that prepares their staff to succeed in YOUR facility. Similarly, employees that are well-trained and treated as professional staff helps keep employee turnover down. Take, for instance, our turnover rate here at Stathakis. As a result of our efforts to improve employee retention, we have achieved a 40% turnover rate compared to the industry average of around 200%. Outperforming competition in such a significant way often leads to the question “what do you do differently than the rest of the industry?”
Our company promotes success and retention through core policies like teamwork and delivery of quality service to all customers. At Stathakis, we do our best to continue learning and improving our service for both our employees and our customers. We are constantly trying to innovate and learn from our mistakes to perform at the highest level in our industry. Our goal is to make our work a rewarding experience for you our customer, and our employees. We try to reward our teams for success with programs like Open Book Management, incentives, and recognition opportunities among other things. We even have an organizational philosophy, Ubuntu that helps shape a welcoming and supportive culture for our people. At Stathakis, we always strive to offer you the best value in commercial cleaning services and our people are the single most important part of our promise to our customers and our community.