You may notice a lot of new faces on the cleaning crew in your building, and this may come as a bit of a surprise to you—but not if you happen to know the following fact. Believe it or not, the average employee turnover in the commercial cleaning industry is around 200%—sometimes even higher. This means if a cleaning company has 250 employees and a turnover rate of 200 percent, they’re hiring at least 500 new employees a year—a staggering number! Surely this very high turnover doesn’t impact your facility, or does it? Unfortunately, it does.
On-the-job training on your dollar.
When there’s a “revolving door” of new cleaning employees showing up at your building, it can impact the job being done in several ways. For example, new hires often require extensive training, which slows down productivity if they’re learning tasks for the first time at your site. Someone has to show them the ropes, and they have to learn, which actually slows down more than one employee trying to clean your facility. With each new hire comes a new learning curve, and it’s a fact that a trainee is less likely to cover as much ground and clean as efficiently as an experienced cleaner. Also, trainees sometimes miss spots, accidentally damage items/objects, and overuse cleaning supplies. Overall, you really don’t want your facility being used as a constant training ground for new cleaning employees. You want a cleaning company already staffed with well-trained employees who are fine-tuned to your cleaning needs and expectations.
Safety first or safety last?
Everyone knows the saying: “better safe than sorry.” It certainly holds true when looking for, or hiring, a commercial cleaning company. Good companies perform extensive criminal background checks, reference checks, and drug screening for new hires in order to keep your employees, facilities, and reputation safe. They also provide valuable safety training to lessen the chance of an accident occurring on the job. But, if the cleaning company is experiencing high turnover, they may just cut corners on these necessary procedures because they’re onboarding too many new hires at once or feel pressured to fill positions. And, if they’re cutting corners on the important things, they may be cutting corners on cleaning your facility, too—and you definitely don’t want that.
Hiring is expensive—for you.
You may never stop to consider this, but the cost of recruiting, onboarding, training, and outfitting new employees in the cleaning industry is expensive. The dollars spent on continually hiring new people is money that’s taken away from investing in new equipment, technology, and training. Some of these costs are absorbed by the cleaning company, but the truth is, most of them are absorbed by you, the customer. They show up as higher estimates, smaller than normal cleaning crews, or as inexperienced crews who offer less value for your cleaning dollar.
Low turnover. High satisfaction.
Some turnover is inevitable and expected, even in the best cleaning companies. That said, better companies understand how turnover impacts their bottom line (and yours) and have a plan in place to make low turnover a big priority. They work diligently and hard to make sure janitorial turnover is as low as possible. Ideally, turnover should be much lower than the national average of 200%—much lower.
The Total Cleaning difference.
When it comes to employee turnover, Total Cleaning is proud to say we have some of the lowest (48% for EVS) in the industry. We also have an exceptionally high client retention rate (98%) since our proven systematic approach gives peace of mind to hundreds of facility managers across various industries. Discover this peace of mind for yourself— request an on-site assessment. It only takes a few minutes at no cost to you. Allow us to demonstrate that Total Cleaning is more than capable of handling your most demanding cleaning job.