If you are like most business owners, you might cringe when you walk past an unsightly display or a messy entryway. Unfortunately, unless you want to watch an employee spend an hour gathering cleaning supplies and tackling that job, you might be tempted to wait until after the doors close for the day to take care of the mess. However, you might be able to teach your employees to clean more efficiently by trying these things:
1: Assign Cleaning Jobs and Track Progress
Instead of letting your employees tackle messes as they see fit, schedule dedicated cleaning times for each worker. Think about where each person works, and what messes typically occur in the area. For example, you could ask your accounting team to remove the trash from the front office at the end of the day, or your cashiers to wipe down registers before they start their shifts.
After you know what you want people to do, create daily checklists for the employees to fill out and turn in. By evaluating these forms, you might be able to tell who is pulling their weight, and who is slacking. In addition to teaching your staff to pay attention to cleanliness, this process also might keep you from correcting employees who are actually doing their jobs.
Lists also serve another purpose. By writing out what you expect each employee to do, you can make sure that you cover your entire store—not just the areas people tend to notice.
2: Teach Workers to Spot Clean Floors
If you are tired of dealing with dirty footprints and garbage littering your business floor, you might ask your employees to sweep, vacuum, or mop floor surfaces every few hours. Unfortunately, you might end up wasting time, energy, and cleaning products if you clean the entire floor instead of just the messy area.
To improve efficiency, ask your employees to spot clean floors instead of spending time tackling the entire salesroom floor. Teach your workers to scan for spills, garbage, and food crumbs. Have easy-to-use, discreet cleaning products available to take care of messes in a hurry. For example, you could invest in a compact, handheld electronic vacuum to suck up dirt, or a microfiber floor mop to spot clean dirty tile.
Although it might seem like a small change, spot cleaning could have a significant impact on your financial bottom line. In fact, one study found that paying an employee who makes $10 an hour to clean floors 5 times a day costs around $18,000 a year, while paying the same employee to spot mop twice a day only costs around $7,200 a year—saving about $10,800 on labor alone.
3: Work From the Top Down
Sometimes when people clean, they end up repeating work because they forget about gravity. Unfortunately, if food particles, dust clumps, or garbage falls onto that floor, you might find yourself re-sweeping or re-mopping, which wastes time and labor. To avoid this common problem, teach your employees to start at the top and work their way down.
Try to identify higher objects that might need to be cleaned, and ask your employees to tackle them first. For example, you might ask your workers to wipe down those cabinets before they clean the counters. That way, if grime makes its way downwards, your employees can wipe it away when they do their normal jobs—instead of repeating cleaning tasks they took care of earlier.
By training your employees to manage their time and to clean effectively, you might be able to keep your store sparkling clean, and have more time to focus on your customers. Get more info here.
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