If you’re a facility maintenance manager at a school, hotel, retail center, office park, or industrial complex, you likely have a long list of items to stay on top of. And when it comes to your janitorial services, you might think hiring, firing, and payroll are the bulk of what you’re responsible for. But the truth is, you can have a janitorial team onsite at your facility every single day and still be sorely lacking in terms of standards of cleanliness and overall performance. At The Budd Group, we know that team members cutting corners or being confused about their task lists are very real risks in any industry – that’s why we instated a janitorial quality assurance program to check (and double-check) that the work that’s being done is held to the highest standards. Here’s how a janitorial quality assurance program works and what it can do for your facility’s success.

Janitorial Quality Assurance Program and What it Can Do for Your Facility

Establishment of Clearly Defined Work Parameters

Every facility across every industry will face similar challenges when it comes to janitorial services. And yet, each facility also presents different opportunities for growth. In the world of janitorial services, there is no one-size-fits-all method that will be successful for every type of facility. That’s why determining your specific janitorial needs – and establishing specific parameters around the work that’s done in your building – is of the utmost importance.

Say you’re running a hotel that sees hundreds of guests come in and out of your doors every single day. Not only do you need to take into account the amount of turnover you face on a daily basis, but you need to be aware of the hours within which your janitorial staff can get the job done. Add in the elements of early check-ins and late check-outs, a limited budget for a specific number of janitorial staff members, and the sheer amount of space that needs to be cleaned, and you can already see why having clearly defined work parameters is crucial. You’re already working within a tight window of time to complete all cleaning and disinfection. After all, if your hotel’s guests are turned away from their rooms at the time you’d promised they’d be ready – even just once – you may lose a customer for life.

The Budd Group – a full-service maintenance, facility support, and building cleaning company – offers a customized set of processes that are implemented and measured at your facility for this reason. We tailor each job to your specific needs, including those related to staffing, scheduling, and budgeting. Once these parameters are in place, you’ll have a clearer picture of where the “holes” in your operation are, and exactly how to fill them.

Key Performance Indicators

Part of this process is determining and defining key performance indicators, or KPIs. KPIs are often utilized across a wide range of jobs, from corporate to industrial, and can help facility managers in particular to measure success as it pertains to them.

Key performance indicators also give you a framework with which you can better evaluate your staff and give them feedback on performance improvement (more on that later.) Examples of KPIs for a commercial floor cleaner team, for instance, might include things like the number of times your hallways and other spaces are vacuumed per day, the level of cleanliness expected during a biweekly or monthly deep clean, the level of productivity of your team, the number of accidents your facility has seen in the last year, the rate of employee absenteeism, and even the cost of your annual floor wax job.

Continual Proactive Communication

Once all of these metrics are established, they’re not of any use unless your team knows about them, is reminded of them, and abides by them. This is what being a manager is really all about. We’ve found that a lack of consistent communication with janitorial team members is one of the leading causes of jobs being poorly done, or lackluster individual performance. Therefore, this step is included in our janitorial quality assurance program in order to ensure a purposeful, customer-focused execution of services.

It’s not enough to have thorough training, janitorial service logs, and an employee handbook – although those are all crucial tools for getting the job done well. Proactive communication means establishing regular team meetings for check-ins, updates, and support, as well as addressing issues at the moment they are spotted – not sitting on them, hoping they’ll get resolved one way or another. The idea of a regular janitorial team meeting may seem foreign at first, especially if your team has been “winging it,” but you’ll soon come to find how effective these touchpoints can be when it comes to the cleanliness and overall success of your facility.

Using Technology Efficiently to Manage Performance, Inspections, and Feedback

Technology is truly a game changer in terms of quality assurance. At The Budd Group, we use top-of-the-line tech (software and hardware) to measure each janitorial job and assess the level of cleanliness, the time spent, the number of employees utilized, and more. All of these systems can help us to thoroughly inspect each facility we service and better understand what process changes may need to be made.

Regular Review Meetings Focused on Performance Improvement

Remember those janitorial team meetings we touched on earlier? Well, these are critical in the quality assurance process, but they’re not the only meetings that should be happening. Every single employee, no matter the industry, has the right to know where they stand with their employer. Employees should always be given the chance to ask questions, give feedback, and hear what they can do to improve in terms of performance.

Regular one-on-one and team review meetings can provide such a forum. These meetings should include an array of topics, from what the employee or team is doing well and should continue, to where they might be lacking and impacting the success of your operation. It should also always leave time for employees to voice any concerns they have, give feedback on areas of improvement they may see (that you may not have seen yet!), and ask questions related to their job tasks.

Thorough Training of Personnel and Constant Supervision

Picture this: you hire a commercial carpet cleaning services company to come in and service your carpets from time to time. This might include vacuuming throughout the day, once a day, or weekly. Or it could mean a monthly deep clean of your carpets, steaming out stains and residue. But to your dismay, you find the team hasn’t a clue what they’re doing. Now, you’re paying in both time and money, left with carpets that are still dirty.

Employers often miss the crucial aspect of implementing a thorough training program for their staff. While this can take quite a bit of thought, planning, and refining in the initial stages, once the program is established, it should be easily replicable as you onboard new staff members.

The Budd Group is serious about training and equipping our staff with both the tools and the knowledge they need to be successful – which ultimately results in your facility’s success. The Budd Group employs thousands of dedicated associates and delivers custom facility solutions to an extensive range of industries, so we want to ensure that every janitorial team member we send to your facility is an expert in his or her field. No one should start a janitorial job with just a cursory understanding of what needs to be done, and at The Budd Group, we ensure that this is never the case. Plus, when we spot the need for re-training, whether it be on a case-by-case basis or at an organized team training event, we have the processes in place to execute what needs to be done.

Work Order Reports and Customer Feedback Mechanisms

One of the best ways to get a sense of your janitorial services’ success is through robust feedback mechanisms. As an education facility manager, you’re likely to hear feedback about cleanliness from your faculty, parents, and even your student body. In an office complex, you may receive feedback on your cleaning services from the employees and managers within each office. While feedback isn’t always pleasant, it’s often the quickest way to improve, as you know exactly what needs to change.

The same principle applies to The Budd Group’s customers. Our clients range in industries from education to hospitality to healthcare, and we always welcome feedback from our customers. In fact, we invite it! We only know what’s working (and what may not be working) if we hear from you, so if you partner with our janitorial teams, never hesitate to reach out to us if you have comments and concerns!

Work with The Budd Group and See Janitorial Quality Assurance in Action

Whether you’re looking for a daily onsite janitorial team or a building disinfection service to come in and deep clean your facility on a monthly basis, The Budd Group can deliver. We’ve been awarded CIMS Certification with Honors as well as CIMS Green Building Certification with Honors by ISSA. The Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) is designed to assist organizations in establishing a management system that ensures quality, efficiency, and overall customer satisfaction. We’re sure you’ll be pleased with the janitorial services we provide, and we offer a Make It Right Guarantee to assure that’s the case!

For more information on our services and values, call us at 800-380-7765.