How do you celebrate excellence in your business?
We have focussed on how to motivate and reward our team to drive up standards over the last 12 months. And we have seen a significant, measurable shift in quality in our cleaning business.
This month we celebrated the achievements of our cleaning colleagues with a glitzy rewards party at the Princess Victoria in Hammersmith.
There were goody bags. There were sashes and gift vouchers, trophies and certificates. And there was a DJ, and bubbly, of course.
But more important than all of that was the work we have been doing all year, to bring about that shift in quality. Here is how we did it.
Training for excellence
Our training programme is central to our business. In the last 12 months many of our long-standing trainers have moved on to new roles – and we have celebrated their success with them. We have been working with some of our existing Helpers, to train them to become our new trainers. This is a great development opportunity and these additional responsibilities are recognised in their pay.
Our training programmes take place through cleaning side by side, with new Helpers working alongside our trainers. We’ve focussed on standardising our processes to create a seamless, consistent experience for our clients – even if their regular Helper is away.
Qualitative data
We love to share great feedback within our business. We provide our clients with a QR code to send us quick and easy feedback on their cleaning visit. And our clients also send in comments via email or through our admin team too. Every Friday afternoon we share positive comments with the wider team, and this gives everyone a motivation boost.
Recognising excellence
Site visits are an essential strand of how we motivate and reward our Helpers. During these visits, we check over 100 different aspects of the cleaning service. Each item receives a score, and our aim is for our Helpers to score 95% or above, to become a member of our 95% Club.
Choosing our winners
We brought together all these elements when we sat down to decide on our winners for this year’s awards. This was one of our toughest years yet, with ten of our Helpers in contention for the top three awards.
We began by looking at the Helpers who had received the most positive feedback and unsolicited comments from their clients.
Then we looked at how they scored on our site visits. Incredibly, the Helpers with the top qualitative results were all in the 99% Club – scoring 99% or above in their site visit checklists.
This tells us something important: the things we look for in our site visits are also valued highly by our clients.
Final thoughts
An awards party is a great way to motivate and reward your team for their hard work. However, to make a real difference to the quality of service you deliver, motivation and reward needs to be embedded into the culture of your business. Every member of your team needs to know how their performance is measured, and what great work looks like. That’s what we are working towards. So next year, I hope that there will be even more worthy contenders for the winner’s trophy.
