I had my cleaning company for 17 years now. I have had my fair share of good employees. My longest serving couple has been 12 years. Then I had some team members for 4+ years. While I do not want them to leave as it is hard to find good team members with our core values, I find that they do run their course due to the nature of the job.
What have you implemented that helped your business to keep and engage long term good employees?
TIA
You don’t “keep” good employees, you give them a reason to stay.
For us, that means: Consistent schedules + pay (no chaos), clear expectations (no guessing games), recognition + growth (they’re not stuck cleaning forever), and actually caring about their life outside work.
Most don’t leave over money, they leave over stress, confusion, or feeling unappreciated.
Fix those, and retention gets a lot easier.
For house cleaning I feel like it is really difficult to retain contractors or employees due to the difficulty of the work. It takes a certain type of person and they have to love to clean. Everyone thinks they can do it until they find out it is hard to do. In addition, these change constantly. For instance, clients change the date, employees call in for various reasons. So consistant schedules is not that easy. I am finding a good commission of at least 55% of the job works great and they set their own schedules ahead of time. I can do better on the reward part as I don't have a big budget for this. Any suggestions would help!
pay them at least $150 per day to start. The #1 factor in a crew member is starting pay and frequency of pay.
It's always good to find out why they are leaving and do what your company can do to take that edge off. If its family time or issues, adapt their start or finish time. If its issues with another employee, revise the schedule. If it is money, incentivise them with some commission. Whatever the issue is I am sure there is a creative solution that makes sense for you and an employee.
Sometimes too you just have to let them leave, the open road is calling. Maybe the industry isn't for them anymore.
Keeping someone who doesn't want to stay can become toxic, but a long standing employee leaving can be toxic too.
Sometimes you got to just take your medicine and keep moving forward. Ahhhhhhh, the joys of business ownership no one really talks about!
I am putting together a package called Longevity Bonus that are paid out at 4 different milestones for each year. IE: $250,000.00 in sales/installs = 3.5% bonus is $8,750.00 and for $500k $750K and 1 Million Restarts every year. I am an owner now but I was a 16 year field sales/tech and would have died for a program like this
