The seven most dangerous words that lead to training failure are, in my opinion, “That’s the way we’ve always done it”. I’ve been in this industry for decades. The first serious training I went to was AFTER I’d been in the business for more than 30 years. In order to grow my own business during the first year of true ownership, I took my first official training! If you’re a busy cleaning company owner, let that sink in a moment.

As I watched the trainer, I argued in my head that this guy was an idiot. He had no idea how things worked out in the field. THAT was not how WE got it done. HIS methods would take too long. On and on I went, becoming more upset through the first day.

On the second day, I recognized the problem…Me. This trainer had our best interests at heart. And, if I actually took time to get my ego out of the way, I could learn something. The first thing I had to break was bad habits.

Bad Habits Lead to Training Failures for Cleaners

There’s nothing wrong with a habit, as long as it’s a GOOD one. Most work practices can be broken into steps. That makes retaining the training easier. But if our front line cleaners don’t understand WHY the step is there, you can expect it to be done poorly. Poor habits and poor communication lead to poorly done work. And that leads to losing a cleaning account.

Training Failure Can Hurt Your Company Financially

The commercial cleaning industry has a high turnover rate for employees. Over 300% is not unusual. That kind of staff turnover is hard on a company’s morale. And it’s equally hard on staff and customers. When you’re dedicating that much time to hire, it become less useful to train. Poor training leads to problems. And now you see the ugly cycle this can become.

Training Failure Can Hurt Your Employees Literally

Losing an account is hard. Finding new work takes time. All of that’s frustrating. But it cannot compare to the heartache of having one of your employees injured on the job. Whether the employee wasn’t sharp enough to retain the training or your company decided not to hire a professional trainer, your company is still responsible. This can get messy and very expensive, very quickly

Guard Your Success with a Cleaning Business Coach

Ensuring your company can provide excellent commercial cleaning requires training your employees. For many small cleaning companies this seems out of reach. At DOC’s we work with companies from 5 employees to 50 employees. We know your pain points because we’ve had them too. Contact us to get YOUR company ready for success in Commercial Janitorial Services!

 

This Week’s Podcast transcript can be found below.

 

00:06 Ray

Joel, this series, When Employees Do Dumb Things. I have a…

 

Joel

Love-hate relationship.

 

Ray

Love-hate relationship with this. The fortunate part about the story that you are about to tell is its ancient history, but it’s terribly applicable to probably every startup company who’s got that guy who says, “I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and this is how we’ve always done it”. Famous last words, “This is how we’ve always done it”.

 

00:38 Joel

“And this is the way it will be done in the next 35 years to boot”.

 

00:43 Ray

The story you related to me was just horrific training. Please share this. I’m going to try not to snort laugh.

 

00:52 Joel

This is one of the more interesting cases that I have been involved with where I was the one who was being trained.

 

00:59 Ray

Okay, so this It was like last week?

 

01:01 Joel

Yeah. If last week was like 40 years ago. Yes. I’ve worked for a company, and they wanted to capitalize on the fact of my youth. If you can believe I was young once. They wanted me to learn more things in a company. As business owners, don’t we always want our staff that comes in to learn more so that they can do more so that they can move up into the company and have new opportunities and make more money and all that? Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to be trained on how to do floor care. (Okay.) I was told that these two guys were the best guys ever.

 

01:39 Ray

So, these are the leaders on the team. They got this.

 

01:41 Joel

Yeah, they got this. You’re going to learn so much from them. I was a green Horn. I knew nothing about floor care. I’d only been working for this company for a very short period of time. I knew how to dust mop and mop. But I never had any floor care experience, and they wanted me to get some. So they sent me out with their project team for the night. (Mutt & Jeff) Mutt & Jeff, yes. We’re going to protect the guilty.

 

There ain’t no innocents in this one. I’m guilty. I meet them at the job site, and they’re like, Oh, we’re going to teach you how to refinish a floor today. We’re going to strip and wax it. Which is old terminology even. So that tells you how long ago this story goes back. They decide to teach me in a way that has when your eyes burn and you wish you never saw what you saw.

 

02:24 Ray

Are you suffering PTSD from this training?

 

02:26 Joel

I am. This is so funny. But it wasn’t funny, but it wasn’t funny at the time. I knew nothing. So I’m on the edge of my seat because I want to learn everything that there is about floor care. It was in an old manufacturing facility. Very greasy, grimy dirt everywhere. You could see a traffic pattern. Which is where people walk up and down hallways and it looks like a road. It’s just embedded dirt. They’re like, Yep, we got to refinish this floor. We got to strip and wax this floor. I was like, Okay. What do I do? Oh, no, you just sit back, and you watch. We’ll explain everything that we do. So, they go over the floor finish bucket, which was a five-gallon pale, and they opened it up, and they go, Okay. You take the floor wax. They opened it up and they start pouring it on the floor down the middle of the…

 

Ray

So, they’re glugging it down the middle of it.

 

Joel

They’re glugging it from one end of the hall to the other. I don’t know any different. They’re the experts, and they do. It was a big hallway. (Okay) And then I’m asking questions because I’m like, there’s a lot of cardboard boxes on the floor.

 

03:25 Joel

Oh, no, we don’t move anything. We work around them.

 

03:27 Ray

They’re not going to sweep it?

 

03:29 Joel

Oh, they didn’t. They didn’t mop it. I know all this now, that’s critical. I didn’t know it back then. I was two weeks on the job. What do I know? They’re going to get the job done all at once.

 

03:38 Joel

They’re going to get it all done at once. So, they’re glugging this down the center of the hallway, and then they get a burnisher. And a burnisher is a machine that’s supposed to be used on a floor to polish it and get rid of the fine scratches and the scuff marks and all that. And the revolutions per minute on this machine was about 1,500 rpm. So that pad was revolving 1,500 times per minute.

 

04:04 Ray

My physics training is starting to kick in here.

 

04:07 Joel

Yeah. And they took that and put the pad on the machine and ran it right down where they just poured all this, what they called wax. As soon as that pad hit that puddle of wax, it just went walls, floors, ceilings, the boxes, the windows, me, them, anybody that was walking through an entryway at the time, and it was everywhere. And at that point, I’m like…

 

Ray

Are you sure?

 

Joel
This doesn’t seem right to me. Oh, no, this is the way we do it. We do it on every job like this, and we have nothing but compliments about the work we do. And I decided that something wasn’t right, and I messaged the manager that was responsible for this area. 911, 911, 911, with the code to the building. Every building had a number, so I put the building number, 911. So, he had no idea what he was walking into. And he walked into this building, and he saw the wax finish all over everything. And like I said, even including me. (Yeah.) And he goes, What the heck happened? Oh, we’re just getting ready to break down another successful job. And because the finish ran under the cardboard boxes, they were adhered to the floor.

 

05:29 Joel

I know that the company that I was working for back then was in a lot of hot water. They kept the account, but when you do training, don’t let your staff train.

 

05:44 Ray

Okay, so let’s go back to this. I realized that this is an old story, Joel. I had a comical one. Well, it’s comical now.

 

Joel

Oh, now it is, yes.

 

Ray

For our listeners, for the clean company owners, for the shift managers, for the things that you and I have shared together on those private moments about what happens that your customers are facing. When we’re talking about staff who’ve been around a long time, oftentimes that attitude persists. This is the way we’ve always done it.

 

06:08 Joel

Those are the most dangerous words in the world. Any manager will tell you that because we’re supposed to be looking for ways to become more profitable. Become better advocates for our customer.

 

06:21 Ray

For our listeners, when you are looking for a training for a professional that actually knows the industry has been at this, contact Joel. Joel, thank you.

 

06:31 Joel

You’re welcome.