For Detail Services, as a commercial cleaning company, keeping employees long term is very important. Actually, it’s likely equally important for most companies including yours. Long term employees should be your best because over time you will have weeded out the lesser performers. And they are your best because of their experience and knowledge. In our case, they know their work sites inside and out and they know what is most important to get done right. They have also built the skills to get their work done quickly. Additionally, they often have positive relations with our clients’ employees. Our long term employees are also our most reliable and usually have the most positive attitude.
One of our long term employees, Ross, has been with Detail Services for twenty-three years. He has primary responsibility for several of our commercial cleaning accounts in Lancaster, but because of our practice of cross-training and his long service, he is also familiar with all of our other work locations in Lancaster and the Denver-Ephrata area. He has also recently learned our work sites in the Reading area as well. This way, if someone needs to be off, Ross can fill in anywhere throughout our service area. In fact, most of our employees are cross-trained in other work sites. This represents a significant investment on the part of Detail Services, but because of it, we shouldn’t ever have to miss an assigned cleaning day. Mike is another employee who is much newer, but he has trained to work at his primary work site plus four others.
Not keeping employees for the long term has a very negative impact on a business. First, turnover means increased costs in terms of hiring and training. Hiring new employees means spending time and money with supervisors or other employees training the new employee their duties and the routines required for the work site. It will also take new employees more time to get the work done and to build relationships with the client’s employees.