Finding Good Help is a Major Challenge

Whether you’re managing a business or simply running your household, you know how true that old cliché still is today. And when you’re lucky enough to find good help, there’s an even greater challenge in keeping them.

When it comes to hiring anyone in the service industry - be it a plumber, electrician, or whatever, it’s amazing how difficult it is to actually reach someone. Have you noticed how long it takes some service providers to get back to you when you leave a message, that is, if they ever get back to you at all?

Use the responsiveness to your initial inquiry as a gauge of what to expect in the future. Any house or office cleaning service, be it an individual or a company, should respond to your initial call within a reasonable time. The promptness, or lack thereof, should serve as a signal with regard to the kind of reliability you might expect, should you decide to hire this individual or company.

Good help is hard to find. It’s even more difficult when recruiting help is not your full time job, as it is with most professional cleaning services. Furthermore, background checks and criminal history investigations are more difficult for private individuals to undertake then it is for large companies, who have developed and utilize a systematic screening process, in conjunction with their hiring practices.

Hiring a reliable cleaning company (instead of trying to find an individual house or office cleaner), which in turn bears the burden of finding, training and managing it’s help, can relieve you of undertaking this ordeal. Another side benefit in choosing a company over an individual house cleaner is that a reliable company will take care of its personnel’s social security taxes, and accept responsibility for workers’ compensation claims - resulting in less hassle and added peace of mind for you.

Define the Job

When interviewing a potential cleaning service, it’s important that both you and your cleaning service clearly agree on what will be included for the quoted fee. Generally, your house cleaner is not responsible for "daily" clutter chores, like picking up after the kids, washing the dishes or cleaning Fluffy’s litter box. The general description of the service is "house cleaning", and you need to determine, up front, exactly what this description includes on each visit.

It will be far easier for both you and your cleaning service, when expectations are clearly defined and mutually agreed upon from the very beginning.
 

Be Prepared to Pay a Fair Price

You work hard for your money, and you deserve to get the most from whatever you choose to spend it on. However, the old adage that says, "any man can make something cheaper and sell it for less, and he who considers price only is this man’s "lawful prey". This is especially true when it comes to getting good value from your house cleaning service.

There are many factors that go into calculating a fair price for cleaning your home or office. The major cost to a cleaning service is labor. The cost to acquire, train, supervise and pay a qualified and professional work force. You can’t attract and keep quality people with minimum wage pay - not in the cleaning industry or, for that matter, in any industry. Yet labor is only one of the costs that cleaning rates must cover.

In addition to labor costs, your cleaning service has other overhead expenses - transportation to and from your home, payroll taxes, including FICA, FUCA, state unemployment taxes, supplies, equipment, marketing expenses, office and administrative expenses, worker’s compensation, bonding and general liability insurance, just to name a few. It is not unusual for it to cost your cleaning service $30 to $40 just to get a team to your home or office - before they even start cleaning.

On top of all that, the cleaning service is entitled to expect a small profit of $20 to $30 per cleaning visit, an amount that surely falls well short of being considered excessive.

The really important factor relative to your cleaning fee is that you should get good value for your money - and that should be more than just a good cleaning job.

What Determines Good Value?

Obviously, since you’re paying for your home or office to be cleaned professionally, you expect a good cleaning job. Your expectations, relative to what was agreed upon at the beginning of your relationship with your cleaning service, should be fulfilled. But the overall value of your service is determined by more than just a clean home or office on every visit.

If you hire someone who agrees to clean for you every Wednesday, but can’t be depended upon to show up on the agreed upon day, it really doesn’t matter how good a cleaning service that individual or company provides. It does not make your life easier when you’ve got clients coming for dinner, and you arrive home from work only to find that your cleaning service failed to show up that day.

Knowing that the service to whom you entrust your home or office have been screened, bonded, professionally trained and supervised can give you greater peace of mind - certainly a major element in making your life easier. A "reliable" cleaning company would never assign anyone to clean your home to whom they would not entrust their own.

Accidents can and do happen, and when they do, "good intentions" may not cut it. Some cleaning services, especially individual house cleaners, do not carry worker’s compensation or general liability insurance. What happens if a cleaner slips and falls on a wet floor, or falls while cleaning your bathtub? What happens if your cleaner accidentally breaks a valuable family heirloom? Knowing that your cleaning service is responsible enough to carry the proper insurance, and legally required worker’s compensation coverage is very important to your peace of mind.

Effective Communication Makes Everyone’s Life Easier

A major cause of misunderstandings that lead to dissatisfaction in the relationship between client and cleaning service, is a simple lack of communication. Communication is a two way street, and since you may not be home on most occasions when your cleaning team visits, "written’ communication is important. Certainly, leaving a note to express a concern or register a complaint is important. But it’s equally important that you periodically communicate your written appreciation for good service. A "clean team" responds well to compliments just like anyone else.

People like to be recognized, and written compliments can go a long way in motivating the "clean team" responsible for your home or office cleaning chores. Use written notes to convey special requests or to address specific concerns. But also look for opportunities to inspire your cleaning people with positive comments as well. You’ll be amazed how far this small gesture will go in motivating your "clean team" to go that extra mile.

Special Requests

Your cleaning team is responsible for cleaning several homes and/or offices each working day. While they will be happy to accommodate special requests you may have from time to time (such as cleaning the inside of the oven or refrigerator or washing the inside of windows, for example) it will be much easier for them to accommodate to your wishes if you provide them with sufficient advance notice.

Rather than leaving a note asking them to do an extra assignment today, call the office in advance or leave a note asking them to do the task on their next regular cleaning visit. In this way, your team can plan their day’s cleaning schedule ahead of time. As you can appreciate, if two or three clients surprise them with extra services on their scheduled day, they may have to skip someone else’s regularly scheduled service.

Keep in mind that you normally will be expected to pay a little extra for work that is not included as part of your normal service.

Your Cleaning Schedule

Most cleaning services work five days a week, Monday through Friday. That means they need to clean 20% of their clients each day. Obviously, not everyone can be cleaned on Friday. Of course, not everyone wants to be - and for good reason. Monday, for example, is an excellent day to schedule your cleaning because it means your house gets spiffed up after the weekend, and you get to come home to a cleaner house all week long. Then again, your cleaner can’t clean everyone on a Monday either.

A factor that may determine your specific cleaning day is the weekday on which a cleaning team is already in your area. If your cleaners are already cleaning several homes in your area on Wednesday, then that is likely to be your assigned cleaning day. It is not economically feasible to send a team several miles out of their way when they’re working in another part of the city on Tuesday, for example, if there is a team in your area on Wednesday.

It’s also important to understand that while your house cleaner may be able to tell you whether they will be at your house in the morning or the afternoon on your scheduled day, it is virtually impossible to set a specific time of arrival. They can’t drop what they’re doing before they’re finished at the Brown’s house in order to get to the Jones’ residence by 10:30 AM, for example. What is important is that if they promise to come on Thursday, then you have every reason to expect them to show up sometime on Thursday - and that is important.

Cancelled Appointments

Just as it might make your life miserable if your cleaners did not show up, without notice, for a scheduled cleaning. It is equally frustrating for your cleaning team to arrive only to find that you "forgot to call and cancel" your regularly scheduled cleaning service. For this reason, your cleaning company may have a policy of charging clients who fail to provide advance notice in canceling a cleaning visit. Conversely, if your team fails to show up as scheduled, you may have an equal right to some type of recompense - like a reduction in the price of your next visit. Of course, emergencies can arise, which may make it impossible for one party or the other to keep a scheduled appointment. Since those types of emergencies are rare, empathy on the part of the offended party should be the order of the day. It would be a real shame to ruin a perfectly good relationship between you and your cleaning company, as a result of circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Ask your cleaning company about their "no show" policy.

Security Issues

Since most clients are not home or in the office when their cleaners visit, there must be some way for the team to gain entry into the house or office. The majority of clients provide their cleaning company with a key or the code to their security system - which a reliable company will treat with the utmost security. Besides management, only the team leader should have access to a client’s keys or security system. Leaving a key under the front doormat, in a mailbox or some other location is not a safe alternative.

If you’re not comfortable giving your cleaners their own key, and there’s a chance you won’t be home when they arrive, you need to have some agreeable and viable alternative for allowing them entry into your home. Being "locked out" for a scheduled cleaning visit is a very good reason for the company to insist on a missed-appointment fee.

Professional house cleaning companies pre-screen prospective employees prior to sending them out into clients’ homes. A background check that discloses impeccable honesty and integrity is critical to the screening process. The standards demanded of applicants and employees of your cleaning service may indeed be higher than those required by firms employing people in the security field.

One lesson we learned from the bible is that even "perfect" humans can give way to overwhelming temptation. If Adam and Eve would chance eternal damnation over an apple, it stands to reason that we should not tempt lesser mortals with a "karat". Never leave jewelry or cash where it can be easily accessed by anyone.

Accidents

Accidents can happen, even with the most careful of house cleaners. Most often they occur because the homeowner fails to notify their cleaners about "booby traps" that may be present: the lamp shade that collapses if you merely look at it the wrong way - the picture that’s hanging by a thread, which falls off the wall the minute the person dusting touches it. Be sure to advise your cleaning service of any such potential perils that may be present in your home.

Many client/house cleaner relationships are terminated when something in the home is broken and the "good intentions" of the cleaning service is not enough to pay for the damages. It’s important that your cleaning service be adequately insured. Insurance is a substantial expense for those responsible cleaning services who carry it, but it’s well worth the peace of mind to you to pay a little more for a service that is properly insured.

Damage to household objects is one thing, but it can be far more serious (and costly) if someone is injured on the job. Your cleaner could slip on a wet floor or fall while cleaning your bathtub. That’s why it’s so important for your cleaning service to cover it’s employees with required workers’ compensation insurance. You might be surprised - indeed, shocked - by the increased premium in your homeowners’ policy if someone is injured on your property, and a claim is made against your insurance company for bodily injury and/or medical expenses.

A major cause of injury to house cleaners occurs during the winter months when they attempt to enter a client’s home with ice-covered walkways or steps. Show common courtesy to your cleaning service by making sure that the outside steps and entryways are safe to walk on, and that a path is always shoveled through the snow on your established cleaning day.

Pets

Family pets can pose a real problem for the cleaning service who doesn’t know whether the big, barking dog is excitedly friendly - or excitedly angry. Should Fluffy the cat be let in (or let out) by the team? If Fido has been locked in a room, you don’t want the cleaner to drop dead of a heart attack when they open the door, only to be greeted by a lunging Rottweiler!

If possible, leave your pets outside on your scheduled cleaning day. It’s a lot easier to clean the house without the cat chasing the mop or having the dog freak out when the vacuum cleaner is running. If pets will be in the home when your cleaners arrive, be sure that they have been warned ahead of time - like, "don’t let the cat out when you come in", or "don’t worry about Rex’s barking".

Tipping

Tips are not required or, in most cases even expected. However they will always be appreciated by your cleaning service providers. Some people do tip, most people don’t. It’s a matter of your own personal preference.