Let’s face it, most people don’t like meetings. I never did. But as you’re blessed with more and more janitorial business growth, you’re going to need them… And if properly planned, you’re going to love the results of your janitorial manager meetings. Twenty-five years in this industry has taught me that a weekly (group) meeting with my managers and supervisors is an essential tool to keep my company on the right track.
The underlying purpose of these meetings is to support my three main goals:
1. Customer Satisfaction – Keep that customer happy!
2. Cleaning Quality – Keep that building clean!
3. Company Budgets –Keep our company Profitable!
Nothing beats face time when it comes to praising a job well done, moving everyone in the right direction, and reinforcing accountability. But because I have multiple Area Managers, responsible for multiple customer facilities, there are always (too) many items to cover. To ensure that we focus on the top 10-12 items that need the most attention, I’ve create an agenda guideline that I’d like to share…
- Have A Written Itemized Agenda: Be prepared and know exactly what your objectives are. Every meeting should have a clear purpose to affirm what’s right, identify what’s wrong and correct what’s wrong.
- Short And Simple: Try to keep the meeting to 1hour to 1.5 hours max. Focus on the “hot spots”.
- Keep The Focus: Keep the meeting on task. You need to direct the flow of the meeting and go item by item on the agenda. If someone wants to jump ahead to an item farther down the list, calmly direct them back to the task at hand. Not because you’re a control freak, but because you need to maintain order and structure to have an effective meeting.
- Review Last Meeting? Acknowledge what was corrected from last meeting. Any items from last week’s meeting that are still not corrected are first on this week’s agenda.
- Acknowledge What’s Right: Praise the good! Thank those responsible in front of their peers!
- Identify What’s Wrong: Here’s two examples:
- Building is within labor budget, but customer has started complaining that paper towel dispensers are not being filled and they’re running out during the day.
- Customer satisfaction scores are high and your inspections are high as well, but you’re labor budgets are suddenly 8 hours a week over.
- Fix What’s Wrong: Here’s the Fix (“action plan”) to the previous two examples.
- Get directly with the employee (and site supervisor, if any) assigned to those dispensers and let them know of the customer complaint and make sure they haven’t lost the keys and usually that solves it. If there’s a site supervisor, make sure checking dispensers are on the End of Shift Checklist.
- Identify what employees are over budget and contact them directly (and site supervisor, if any) about correcting. Usually attributed to new employees getting used to their assignments. Both of these ”fixes” are discussed at the meeting and expected to be corrected before the next meeting.
- Any Other Issues?: Just before the end of the meeting, I’d always ask, “any other issues or comments”? This gave all the managers a chance to briefly bring small issues up for discussion or just to tell a funny story that happened the past week.
- Recap: This would be where we briefly recapped the meeting, making sure everyone understood what was required of them to keep us on track.
Remember, everyone needs motivation, direction, structure and accountability to achieve a common goal!
