Alrighty,
Killing time and how employees steal our company resources by killing time.
Yes, we're going to talk about that again today.
This is part three of three.
I am Angela Brown and this Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
and I get to help you find an answer.
Okay, so the questions were how do I manage my employees from stealing and wasting all
this company time?
This is part three in our epic series on things that employees do and things you need to be
aware of in order to manage that in your business.
All right.
Killing time, number 11 is house cleaners kill time with no schedule.
Believe it or not, I don't know how there are house cleaners that are just organic in
their cleaning approach.
They show up whenever they feel like it.
The customer has no set schedule.
They have no set schedule.
They show up whenever they feel like cleaning a house.
It could be one Tuesday.
It could be the next Thursday.
It could be on a Saturday.
It could be, again, the next Tuesday.
It could just be whenever.
It drives the customers bonkers, but it kills time because the house cleaner never knows
when they're working, they never know if they're working.
They're just kind of a floater and you cannot run a business that way.
All right.
Number 12.
Killing time with no routine.
This is a cleaning routine.
I'm talking about systems here.
You get to a house and you just wing it.
Like, okay, so like today I think I'll start in the living room.
Then next time I think I'll start in the kitchen.
Then the next time I think I'll start in the guest bedroom.
No.
When you arrive at a house, and you know the house, and you know what is involved, you
know exactly what room you need to start in.
Go from left to right, top to bottom.
Start in that one room, work your way through the house, in whatever organized fashion you
have created.
You need a system and you need a routine because you know down to the minute how long it's
going to take you to clean that house.
If you randomly start wherever, you forget things.
You get off track.
You get off your pattern.
You get screwed up.
Then you skip stuff and you miss stuff.
It takes longer than you expect because you're not on the routine.
Another killing time tip is have a routine, so you don't kill time, you don't waste time,
you don't screw up.
Killing time number 13 is not having the right supplies.
I cannot speak to this enough.
How on earth do you think you're going to show up to a customer's house and clean the
house and not have the right supplies?
If you did an inventory the night before, you've got plenty of supplies to get you through
the job.
It kills time when you go, "Oh my gosh, I just ran out of something.
Like, whoa, how did that happen?
I totally didn't see that coming."
Then you have to stop and you have to run down to the grocery store in the middle of
a job to buy new cleaning supplies because you ran out.
What on earth?
That's not the way to run a business at all.
Do inventory the night before.
Pack your cleaning caddies, pack your car, so that you know when you show up at a customer's
house, you have everything you need.
If they throw extra projects at you and you have time and you've agreed to do extra projects,
you have those supplies.
If there's a particular house that requires a particular thing, if you do your inventory
the night before and you know that tomorrow I'm going to Becky's house and Becky needs
a particular kind of polish that she pays us for, the polish must be in my caddy because
I'm going to Becky's house tomorrow.
She's the only one of your clients that gets that polish.
But when you get to Becky's house, you have the polish
because you did inventory the night before.
All right.
I get off my soap box.
All right.
Number 14 is not having working equipment.
Guess what?
This is not a surprise.
Do not surprise yourself.
If this ever happens to you, this is not a surprise because I'm telling you this right now.
I'm telling you right now, it is not a surprise when you wake up in the morning and your car
does not work.
That is not a surprise.
That is not a good excuse.
That is killing company time.
If your car is not working, then guess what?
You know it's not working.
You know it's on the fritz.
Make sure that the battery is working properly.
Make sure that you have gas in your car.
If your car just breaks down for no random reason, how often does that happen?
Once every couple of years?
If you got an old, crappy, beat up car, maybe it happens more than that.
But you should have a working car.
You should have reliable transportation.
If you are a business, you should have reliable transportation.
If you show up and you have a broken vacuum, that's not a surprise.
That's not a surprise.
Your vacuum might break one day during work and you need to call somebody on your way
out of the job and you need to go get it repaired right now because showing up every day with
a broken vacuum or a broken car, that is not a surprise.
That kills company time.
You cannot run a business with broken equipment.
There you go.
All right.
The last one.
Killing time number 15 is not having clothes to wear.
Where you get up every single day and you're like, oh golly, let's see.
What are we going to wear today?
Don't do that.
Don't put yourself through those gyrations.
It's foolish.
Get a uniform, get seven versions of that uniform, and wear them every single day.
At the end of the week, you will do laundry and you will have clothes for all of next week.
Do not ever put yourself in a situation where you wake up in the morning and you're scrambling,
looking for things to wear.
This is not a guessing game.
This is a science.
You kill company time when you have no idea what you're wearing.
You have no idea how you're going to present yourself to the customer.
Show up looking the same every single time because that sends a message to the customer
that they have consistent service every single time.
This is a consistent person.
They look the same every single time.
I know exactly what I'm getting.
All right.
Those are 15 ways that employees kill time.
If you solve those 15 things, you will now be an excellent manager of
your company time and resources.
All righty.
That's my two cents for today. And until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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