For those with a get-it-done attitude, building company culture may sound like a mushy model for success. With over 3 decades in professional cleaning, I can assure you its anything but mushy. In fact, building company culture can save your sanity, your business and maybe even your life. If that sounds overly dramatic, read on and prove me wrong.

 

What Company Culture Means

Building company culture is not a way to avoid work, reward the shiftless or punish the diligent. YOUR company culture is an expression of what you want in the workplace. AND it can frame the success of your employees just as much as it frames your business. Our consulting services help owners see that this culture defines the actions that are and are not accepted in your business.

 

How Company Culture Expresses Itself

When your company culture is working to build your business, there are a few things you’ll notice. The attitudes you model will be adopted by your employees. If your attitude is negative, that will become your culture. I’d suggest a different choice. Your call. Your interviewing frequency will decrease and so will your hiring. Why? Because more of the people who fit your culture are staying longer.

Will you still have some “bad apples”? Probably. But even when you do, you’ll find them before they poison the good people you have.

 

How Company Culture Saves

Your Sanity. Well maybe we could more accurately call this “your peace of mind”. Having members of your staff ask who they can help during the holidays, makes a big difference. Listen for that one in this podcast.

Your Business. The concept of commercial cleaning is simple. The variations in structural needs and divergent soils to clean is not what makes it complex. That wrinkle relies almost completely on the people. When you know you can count on your core staff members, you’ll recognize it’s the business culture you’ve helped to develop.

Your Life. I’m not kidding here. A couple years ago, I faced a life-threatening case of COVID. Those were busy and frantic days for those of us in commercial cleaning. Were it not for a couple friends and my staff, I would have waived off see the doctor. “I’m just tired and over-worked”. I can say that had I not gone to the doctor, I would not have made it to the hospital. And seeing that they revived me, I would not be telling you how important the people around YOU are, today.

 

How to Get the Company Culture You Want

Developing a productive and positive company culture isn’t easy. And considering all the daily challenges that owners and managers face, you might not be able to do it alone. Most cannot and honestly, many never do. If you’d like to excel, contact me for a coaching evaluation. You and your cleaning staff will be glad you did!

 

This Week’s Podcast transcript can be found below.

 

00:08 Ray

Joel, this is a timely topic. This is coming out on Christmas Eve this year. But the delicate balance of company culture and family values in the commercial cleaning industry.

 

00:20 Joel

It is a delicate balance. It’s like walking on thin ice. Company culture just does not happen. It’s something that you have to work on. One of the things that we have done within my companies, we work very hard at developing a family-like atmosphere so that we know our staff. We know if they’re married, if they have kids, if they have grandchildren, all that. Yes, those types of things are important to people. So when you’re small talking during work, you talk about, Oh, I got to go to my grandchild’s play. So, you have all these magical moments that you’re working and interacting with your staff. But yet, on the company side also, you have clients that might work 365 days a year. Even on the holidays, depending on what types of industries that you start going after. The client doesn’t care, in essence, about the fact that people have families. We as a company, do care that we have people with families. Back around Thanksgiving time, I had two people reach out to me because their buildings were closed on Thanksgiving.

 

01:24 Ray

The structures that they cleaned.

 

01:25 Joel

The structures that they cleaned for us were closed for the holiday. And they reached out to me to see if there were other businesses that we cleaned that were open on Thanksgiving. Because they were willing to work in order to give somebody the day off, if necessary, so they could spend it with their families. Because these people, and that is part of what I’m talking about with the delicate balance, is that we’ve created a culture where our staff cares about our staff.

 

01:54 Ray

That’s pretty grand, Joel. I got to say.

 

01:55 Joel

It is. And how do you go about building that culture? You have to nurture it. It’s just like you can’t just throw seed down on the ground and expect it to sprout. You got to till the field. You’ve got to fertilize it. You got to water it. You got to make sure the sun shines on it. Well, that’s even with your own staff. You have to be in a supportive environment. We do a lot of training. We do a lot of coaching. We do a lot of nurturing of these individuals and let them know that there’s job opportunities above an entry-level position as we grow. And then we use real-life examples current employees that work for us that have grown in our company over the course of time. So people can see that it’s not just lip service, that it actually happens because we promote from within.

 

02:40 Ray

As you go through your day understanding that you’re not fresh at this, You have developed the resilience and the calluses that you need. Because much of your day is filled with what feels like unrealistic requests.

 

02:55 Joel

It could have been a contender.

 

02:56 Ray

They simply happen. And, at the owner and manager level, you have to be able to modulate your reaction. I’m sure there have been times you closed the phone off and thought some choice words.

 

03:09 Joel

Oh, I’m sure that’s happened.

 

03:10 Ray

But when you turn to your staff and something has to get done, there’s this balance between maintaining a good business continuance. That means we all get to work and continue to serve. But we still have to keep the customer happy and…

 

03:27 Joel

Our staff happy. Because if people aren’t happy where they work, they’re going to look for employment elsewhere. You still have to be able to discipline people. You still have to be able to be the bad guy on occasion or the bad gal on occasion. But most good employees realize that, yes, I should have been disciplined for that. Because it’s part of growth. It’s just like raising children at home. You can’t be the friend all the time. You also have to be a parent. Well, you can’t be a good boss all the time. Sometimes you have to be the bad boss. And it doesn’t mean that you treat them with disrespect. And in this industry, there is a lot of disrespect that is given sometimes by clients. Like, Here’s a toothbrush. Get down on your hands and knees and scrub the tile.

 

04:10 Ray

We talked about that story. That’s insulting.

 

04:12 Joel

It’s insulting. And it’s also insulting in the fact that a lot of the individuals that work in this industry happen to be minorities. And minorities feel a certain way about being dictated work that way. So, coming as a boss and having that conversation with that client and tell them that that behavior is not going to be tolerated. And in some cases, I have even canceled clients’ contracts because of that. And (then) moved my staff member to a building where they’re going to be supported by the client and not treated with disrespect.

 

04:44 Ray

That requires some chutzpah.

 

04:45 Joel

It’s not something that I could just do initially because you’re trying to grow a business. But as I’ve built an established business and I have a certain way we do things. But I also expect the same respect to be given to us by our clients. And It’s part of that, again, the nurturing of our staff. It’s just not work. It’s also doing lunch and learns and bringing in different groups of people that are going to help them. So, bring in somebody that can talk to them about how to fix their credit. They want to buy a house. Bring in somebody that can talk to them about what things they’re going to need to do and what to get in place in order to purchase a house. Oh, they want to buy a car. Some of my greatest accomplishments as a business owner were knowing I had two people buy houses last year. Their first houses; Watching one of my employees grow from not speaking any English to being able to speak English and have a very important role within my company in buying their first brand new vehicle. And even some families that have struggled and ridden the bus, being able to buy their first used vehicle.

 

05:47 Joel

Those are some of the moments I can sit back as a business owner and I just shine from within.

 

05:52 Ray

Well, you know that you’ve impacted not only the output of your business, but someone else’s life, period. And their family.

 

05:59 Joel

They’re my family. My staff over the years have become my family. And a lot of people say, Oh, you shouldn’t get that close to your staff. It happens by default because when you have a company culture that wants people to learn and grow and get promoted, they’re here a long time. I’m sorry, nine years working next to somebody? You’re going to get to know them. You better believe it. Then you become a family, even though you’re not blood related, it’s your work family. You spend more time with your work family than you do your own family. And when you treat people right, they will come to the plate and they will help you out in a time of need when a client comes and has a major complaint or has a big VIP moment that they forgot to tell you about, and you have to perform magic.

 

06:42 Ray

A question on this as we bring this episode to a close. You had talked about having to discipline, correct, instruct, really instruct employees. We see people on our staff who are likely to stay. (Correct.) And some who aren’t going to. It just happens.

 

07:00 Joel

You usually can tell who they’re going to be as well, yes.

 

07:03 Ray

My question for you toward our listener who is a business owner and might be sitting there maybe after a hard day thinking, “I don’t want to baby any of these people”.

 

07:14 Joel

It never happens.

 

07:16 Ray

But for that person, what advice would you give to the encouragement of good planning really does mean balancing these two things. It’s not just, screw them all. We need to make money today, that’s it. What advice would you give that person?

 

07:32 Joel

I would say that all they have to do is look at Steven Jobs of Apple when someone says, What if we don’t train our people? And put that extra effort in. And he says, What if we do and they stay?

Because the biggest cost to a cleaning company is the turnover. The time that you have to interview people; Onboard an individual into a job; Train them on that job, and then teach them about all the little idiosyncrasies of that client. And then when you have that constant turnover. That client feels neglected and feels bad. And yes, I have turnover. Yes, I’ve had that happen to me where a client has said, There’s just too much turnover here. I have to go in a different direction. And it hurts because you know that you can do it. But you have to remember, training, treating people right, even when they misbehave or do something that really upsets you, just like a child, you don’t stop caring about your staff member. You still have to put the effort into them. Because they can’t get better without the training and the direction and the guidance. And that’s what we try to accomplish so that the end goal is growth. So that there’s more opportunities for people, and that we get referrals from our current client base to continue to grow.

 

08:46 Ray

Great advice, Joel. Thank you. (You’re welcome.)