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TIME IS MONEY
What you are really selling in this industry is time, which makes time your most valuable asset. Make sure you know where every minute of your time, your employee's time and your financial investment in time is going. If you pay by the hour, tracking every minute of time is even more important. If you have a team of 3 and each person wastes only 12 minutes per day at $9/hr it costs you $1377.00 per year. Know where every second of every paid hour is going and you will have a strong profit margin. You'll have sufficient time in your schedule for high volume. Normally recruiting efforts and employee turnover rates are both positively affected when you can manage a paid staff. Track times and study those numbers daily. They will tell you where you are losing efficiency, which translates into time, which translates into money.
Make a form that will be filled out daily by any person or team cleaning homes. They can be turned into your office daily or a minimum of once a week. The rule in our office was that an individual cleaner or Team Leader, if you work by teams, could not receive their paycheck until they turned in a Daily Team Tracking Form. Review what the allowable time was in a home versus the actual time it took. Look at driving time between homes. Then fix any problems you see in either area. If you are spending too much time driving to a repeat client's home that is out of your general area then give the cleaners enough flyers to last them for 2 hours and have them put flyers out in the area before or after they clean that home the next time. When you receive a call from that area only clean them on the same day and in the same time slot. Give then a discount, if necessary, to book them at that time.
IMPLEMENTATION:
Put together a spreadsheet that includes Employee Name, Client Name, Arrival Time, Departure Time and any other relevant data. It will save you time if you have them calculate the actual cleaning time and driving time for each home or if this data is entered into a software program that tabulates for you. This form can also be used for documenting breakage and damage, client requests shared with the cleaner, etc. Go over this form during orientation so that filling it out becomes part of their daily habit.
(Excel spread sheet will calculate for you)
Sincerely,
Sharon Tinberg and Sharon Fliess
Rags to Riches Success Maid Easy |
