Increasing Efficiency in Your Cleaning Business

It can be hard run­ning a clean­ing busi­ness and man­ag­ing employ­ees. The biggest cost of a clean­ing busi­ness is labour! So if a clean­ing busi­ness wants to sur­vive, they need to increase their effi­cien­cy and stop wast­ing time to save mon­ey.

So how do you increase the effi­cien­cy of your clean­ing busi­ness?

Talk to your employ­ees reg­u­lar­ly as they will have the best idea of what tasks are most time con­sum­ing. They may even have ideas on changes that can be made to take advan­tage of time. This is also a good way for your employ­ees to feel val­ued. You may want to del­e­gate par­tic­u­lar respon­si­bil­i­ties to dif­fer­ent employ­ees. For exam­ple, you may give a par­tic­u­lar employ­ee the respon­si­bil­i­ty of order­ing and man­ag­ing stock.

Reg­u­lar team meet­ings are impor­tant to dis­cuss what is going on with­in the busi­ness. This should include what is not work­ing, what is work­ing, and pro­vid­ing an open forum for employ­ee sug­ges­tions. Iden­ti­fy­ing these areas is the first step to cor­rect­ing issues and tak­ing advan­tage of what is work­ing well.

Many busi­ness­es do not have pro­ce­dures or check­lists that their employ­ees can use. These doc­u­ments can assist with effi­cien­cy as it pro­vides a bench­mark for employ­ees to refer to. Clear pro­ce­dur­al doc­u­ments allow employ­ees to have the best prac­ti­cal advice at their fin­ger­tips. This can lead to less phone calls or ques­tions about sit­u­a­tions that may arise.

It is often dif­fi­cult for busi­ness own­ers to del­e­gate duties to oth­er employ­ees. How­ev­er, this can be a very impor­tant step in grow­ing your busi­ness. One of the most impor­tant things to remem­ber when del­e­gat­ing is to give clear instruc­tions whilst ensur­ing that these are under­stood. You may want to ask employ­ees to repeat your instruc­tions back to you to pre­vent mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Avoid­ing mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion can save time and mon­ey.

One of the biggest hur­dles that a clean­ing busi­ness can have is hir­ing and retain­ing good staff. Make sure you have hir­ing, onboard­ing, and train­ing sys­tems imple­ment­ed with­in your busi­ness. These sys­tems can increase effi­cien­cy and give your employ­ees the best chance at suc­cess. 

Effi­cien­cy can severe­ly affect a busi­ness’ bot­tom line. The above tips are just a start to iden­ti­fy areas for improve­ment, how­ev­er you also need to fol­low through and imple­ment the change.