Improving business processes in commercial cleaning: Staff scheduling

Keeping up with the growth of the commercial cleaning industry is an incredible challenge for most companies. A recent report by ISSA and ACC shows growth in the commercial and industrial cleaning market is expected to reach the $90 million mark by next year. 

In order to keep up or exceed the rising market growth, companies need to identify ways to remain competitive. Different strategies help, but businesses often need to rethink how a change in processes can affect the outcome of growth.

A good example of this is day-to-day processes and how they are performed. One of those most occurring and often trickiest processes is scheduling. Optimized scheduling can have a drastic impact on daily efficiencies and create more room to invest in growth.

Our current blog series, “Improving Business Processes in Commercial Cleaning,” is dedicated to helping businesses understand how changes in those day-to-day processes have an impact on performance, efficiency, and growing your bottom line. 

Today’s blog will focus on the effectiveness of proper scheduling and how to optimize your business for growth. 

Scheduling in the janitorial industry

Scheduling is an area of commercial cleaning that seems to be a point of contention that not all business owners know how to tackle. Many janitorial business leaders find it difficult to hire and retain good staff. The pandemic also compounded the problem by leaving fewer candidates in the labor pool. 

Now that conditions have improved, the talent pool has ramped back up, and many owners have become focused on improving their internal organization to support current or new talent. Scheduling is so important to not only client satisfaction but employee enablement.

As one Aspire customer expressed, “We need to understand where our staff is at all times, what they are working on, where are they going next, how productive they are, and most importantly, we need to respond when we are short staff and change schedules on the fly.” Sound familiar?

Cleaning businesses need flexibility

Commercial cleaning businesses need flexibility regarding scheduling. 

When schedules are fixed, it becomes challenging to respond to changes, especially as the scope of work increases or expands into new areas. Curveballs that can arise throughout the week, such as staff being out sick for extended periods, or new locations with unforeseen challenges, further increase this need for flexibility.

Many cleaning clients must also have their location cleaned at certain times of the day/week. Businesses schedule with the best intentions at the beginning of the week, but when they near the end of the week, what was originally a set schedule, has completely shifted and become a hurdle within itself.

Here are some things to consider when working out a scheduling system that enables flexibility:

Crew management: You need a clear scope of where your employees are at all times and when they are or aren’t available. Having a system that provides live updates on when they arrive at a job or are late for arrival can also boost visibility. Therefore, if someone misses a scheduled shift, you can see who’s available or nearby and immediately course correct.

Routing: Being a regional commercial cleaning company has many advantages if you’re strategic about property management. It’s easier to reduce transportation time if you plan the order in which your teams arrive at a site. Having nearby sites makes it easier to plan shorter routes or to be able to adapt to jobs that run over their scheduled time. 

Enhancing time management

Businesses that need adaptive scheduling features in a time-based system should consider a cloud-based management software solution for janitorial time management. 

A cloud-based management software provides live insights into your organization to help you manage time, staff, and optimized routing. It reduces the risk of scheduling errors and ensures that accounts are maintained on a tight schedule. Office staff would be able to manage their crew in the field better using hourly or quarter-hour scheduling. This way of scheduling also allows businesses to be extremely flexible when clients need to be accessed at specific times.

In addition, work tickets can be scheduled with precision allowing managers to schedule specific start times and quickly adjust on the fly if needed. This prevents double booking and keeps field staff working, traveling, and operating efficiently. It allows office staff to set up “work windows” that enable field staff to access properties on time and at specified times.

Aspire’s janitorial solution provides time-based scheduling that allows you to:

• Help the office reduce downtime of field staff

• Avoid double booking of properties

• Enable better staff flexibility with time-based scheduling 

• Schedule jobs based on a specific time that is best for you or your client

• Empower office staff to better track employees in the field with in-platform absentee notifications

Want to experience software designed to help janitorial companies achieve growth at twice the industry rate? Schedule a commercial cleaning software demonstration with Aspire and see how you can take your business efficiencies to the next level.