My cleaning employee refuses to do deep cleans or move in and move out cleanings.
What should I do?
Ooh, that is a tough question and we are going to talk about that today.
Hi there?
I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask A House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
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All right, onto today's show which is from a professional house cleaner.
She has a staff and there is one particular girl that calls out every single time there
is a deep clean or a move in move out clean.
She only does maintenance cleans of her own choosing.
So, if she's given a deep clean she just doesn't show up that day.
What on earth is going on?
All right.
Well, there are a couple of things that are going on.
Maybe she hasn't told you that she has a medical condition like maybe she's pregnant.
And for a deep clean, you're going to be at a house maybe six hours instead of three.
And so, if she's there for six hours she may need to stop and rest.
She may need some food.
If she bends over like she's cleaning the baseboards or something which is maybe not
part of your maintenance clean, it's possible that she gets sick and she throws up.
There may be things that are going on that we just don't know.
So, the very first thing I would do is I would sit her down and have a conversation and say,
"Come on, you got to tell me what's up because every time there is a deep clean you're calling out.
What is going on?"
She might be able to shed some light.
That is a very valid concern.
Now if there is no valid concern and she's just calling out because she's lazy, that
requires a whole different set of communication skills.
Because now you have to make new rules and say, "Okay, I'm the boss and you don't get
to decide which jobs you pick and choose.
We don't work that way, we have a schedule.
We have clients, and we go and we service those clients.
If you want this job, you have to go service those clients."
So, if she agrees to that, that should be in writing.
If that's in writing you need to get her to sign it and a copy of that needs to go inside
her employee file, because if for any reason later on down the road you decide you want to fire her,
you need to have that documented
so that she doesn't come back and get workman's
comp and all these other things because you breached your contract, or you let her go
prematurely.
You don't want a lawsuit on your hands.
There's all weird stuff that can happen.
If you let her go because she's violated the rules or what have you, at least it's in the
employee file.
You've done everything you were supposed to do.
Another thing that you may want to consider is there are people that are really, really
good, at certain things and then there are people that are lousy at other things.
Even in my own company, we have that.
I have people that have different skillsets.
I don't defame them or make them feel bad because they don't have the skillset,
but when I see the quality of their work compared to the quality of their work over here
I say to myself," Angela don't give this person this job anymore
because they did a lousy job at it.
This doesn't, this doesn't pass."
And over here they did a spectacular job.
Give them more of this and less of this, right?
So, there are ways that you can still work with existing employees because some employees
they do excellent work over here, they may just not have the right skill set to do a
deep clean, right?
So, maybe this particular house cleaner just doesn't have the skillset.
I don't know.
And then my next question is has she went through proper training?
If you have a great training program and it shows you how to do deep cleaning and it shows
you systematically how to do deep cleaning, it shouldn't be a problem.
But maybe in her mind, it's so overwhelming because she doesn't know exactly what she's
supposed to be doing.
And so it's easier for her to just call out and not do those cleans.
So, take a look at your own training.
What does that look like?
Are you giving fair information to your employees?
Have you armed them with the proper tools that they need to do a deep clean?
Did you know that on a deep clean there are a lot of cleaners that go in there with a
scrub drill?
It's not part of their maintenance clean and they don't carry it with them on all their
maintenance cleans, but there's this big drill with a special head on it.
I'll leave links in the show notes so you can see what I'm talking about.
They'll go into a shower and they' clean all the grout and they make everything shine and
it's awesome and it reduces a lot of the elbow grease.
So, that's fun, but that is part of a deep clean.
Maybe she doesn't have the right tools.
So, I don't really know what is going on in this particular scenario,
but I don't think it can be ignored.
I think it's really important that as the business owner you take a step back and you
try to figure out what is going on and give her every benefit of the doubt because there's
probably something very valid.
We've had house cleaners that were, in fact, pregnant but they hadn't announced it yet.
And they didn't want to tell us because they didn't want us to not put them on the schedule
because they still needed the money.
But they didn't know how their bodies were going to react when they went through the
morning sickness.
And then pretty easy you pick up on it, and you're like, "Hey, you're puking every day,
you're nauseous and something I need to know about?
"Oh yeah, I'm pregnant."
You're like, "Oh okay.
Now I know."
At least you know, right?
So, maybe it's just time to have the conversation so that you can work with them,
not work against them.
Because if they don't tell you what's going on and you don't ask, and you don't find out
and you don't create new systems and procedures that either support your workers,
you're going to have a huge problem going forward.
Because you can't have employees that just call out randomly on jobs because they don't
feel like it.
That doesn't work, that's not how you run a house cleaning business.
So, it's time that the two of you get together and have a conversation.
My suggestion is to be light-hearted about it, and be forgiving, and give her every benefit
of the doubt.
All righty, that's my two cents for today.
Until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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