Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: geefree on July 22, 2011, 08:11:10 am
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Hi,
Firstly to the guys who employ a few staff,
your rounds must be quite large, so i presume you trust people to collect some of your money in.
so they have an idea of your earnings ??
If online payments mostly, who keeps check of all the transactions,?
because i know it takes some doing with one round , so god knows how you guys do it.
so you have a secretary who deals with it?
does she see all your bank details?
i agree some will say their wives do that side of it ,
but what about the rest who employ in a bigger way ?
Gary.
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Good questions I often wonder the same
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you got to trust someone pal.
your staff will have to collect in some way or other so all you need to do is make sure all the monies are correct.
also a quick check over the business banking every week making sure all is ok.
not really that much of a big deal
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the problem is the poor effect it has on moral of somebody working for you for £6 ish per hour, and collecting £50 per hour. it plays on their mind and is only a matter of time before they start to think that theyre doing all the work and your raking in money. also the clients will get a relationship with your staff rather than yourself, os if the cleaners ever do set up on their own your customers will probably feel more loyalty to them than to you. the best way is to keep your cleaners away from the money, and thats online payments or standing order payment.
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iv never had any problem with staff taking payments from customers, and customers never having a problem passing payment too staff, if you cant trust your staff to take payments can you trust them to do other things like do a job well.
my staff understand costs of running a business and that im not pocketing it all.
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in my experience staff always believe that if you run a business you must be loaded! only one of my staff understands the cost of running my business and that's my manager who sees a lot of the costs as its her job to manage some of the accounts. other than that it doesnt seem to matter what you say to staff, they always think you're raking money in...
i wonder what you are doing that is different to me richy if youve not encountered the same thing?
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iv always employed friends really so suppose that has helped now im getting bigger i think il keep accounts private but on our worksheets etc it shows price, and my staff price up jobs etc too so they know what would be coming in anyway, we give them a target to hit so how would they hit a target if they didnt know house prices
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interesting...
do they get a bonus if they hit target then?
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no haha not yet anyway ;D ;D we are introducing a bonus if they get say ten new jobs on a month whilst working give them 50 quid
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i'm thinking of doing a similar thing for new clients. only problem i;ve found is that by offering bonuses its really easy to encourage the wrong thing, and its really easy to upset people, like for instance with bonuses for new clients they may under price work, or they may argue as to who signed up the client, or the people in the office get upset that they don't get a bonus even if they ve done a lot of chasing etc etc etc... as a boss you re just trying to encourage good working, but what actually happens can be quite a surprise. be interesting to see how well it works
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matty who works for me prob brings in 5-10 jobs a week from when hes working and other work like fascias etc n it aint fair got to show them that you value them for it,matty actually the opposite to the canvasser he understands why its important to price well and he gets jobs on for more than i would!!
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if your paying £6ish a hour it wont help...pay them a good wage and unless your business is all residential they dont need to know the prices for your commercial
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they re on different wages depending on their skills and what workload they can manage. £6 ish is the junior wage.
however it doesnt really matter what wage you pay them as they only see the money coming into the business. it s human nature anyhow to believe that if they're earning x then their boss must be earning xxx!
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richard so from what your saying were all doomed has we will never keep an employee happy has they will always feel they van earn more on there own?
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nope that's not what i say or think :) i;ve got employees myself and have been employing for over 3 years now. what i am saying is that there is a problem with having employees on an hourly rate who can see what money their employer is bringing in on an hourly basis. they do not see what the profit is, but i would say that most people, or staff, who have not run a business them self are not at all aware of the many expenses that we face. in their mind the WC will tend to see the money that they think we are earning per hour, and compare it with what we pay them. they then start to feel disgruntled over time with the 'look how much i;m earning my boss a day, and look what he's paying me'. over time this plays on their minds. the problem is massively reduced if you can keep them from seeing the prices and handling the money. this is my experience but i am delighted to hear that richy hasnt had this problem so far, and will be even happier if i can take steps to reduce the effect of it.... any suggestions?
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nope that's not what i say or think :) i;ve got employees myself and have been employing for over 3 years now. what i am saying is that there is a problem with having employees on an hourly rate who can see what money their employer is bringing in on an hourly basis. they do not see what the profit is, but i would say that most people, or staff, who have not run a business them self are not at all aware of the many expenses that we face. in their mind the WC will tend to see the money that they think we are earning per hour, and compare it with what we pay them. they then start to feel disgruntled over time with the 'look how much i;m earning my boss a day, and look what he's paying me'. over time this plays on their minds. the problem is massively reduced if you can keep them from seeing the prices and handling the money. this is my experience but i am delighted to hear that richy hasnt had this problem so far, and will be even happier if i can take steps to reduce the effect of it.... any suggestions?
Would you not face this issue in any industry?
No matter if say an admin person didn't see exact figures coming in, they would still know that a lot more than their wage must be coming in. It wouldn't take much brainpower of any employee to work out that the more people that work there, the higher the overall income. In some cases it may be better that they have an idea of what is coming in, because if they start guessing it could be a worse situation :)
One tip when we employed window cleaners, was to have a good hourly rate, along with an attendance bonus (which was deducted if they didn't turn up) and then a bonus on top for hitting targets and no complaints. We still got grumbles, but that is part of employing (unfortunately :))
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hi helen,
thanks for your ideas.
i dont think that WC is unique in this problem, but i do think that it is worse than some. there's something about the fact that the employees are in their mind providing all the service (and think they're doing all the work) and then are collecting the money. probably something about the fact that they work out of the office too so they arent very close to you for the day.
as for an attendence bonus if they turn up!!! do you mean if they have days off for sick, and i guess arrive on time, or do you mean unauthorised leave, meaning not coming into work without an acceptable reason? if its the latter i just cant accept it and have to sack em! ::)
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i think many will take the attitude....i do all the work and he earns all the money.....they are also the wrong people has there already questioning in there head why your not doing the work ect.
i constant tell my employees god iv geot to pay 3k vat today or 4.5 insurance ect ect i aklso pay them well and try to look after them all though im no saint and im always learning, my attiude can stink and the older i get the more i try to think b4 i go off on one.
but employee can be a pain but i fyou want to grow its a must and along with growing come head aches and problems, youll never prevent but learn to deal with them better
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A little tip is to get online payments and then the price does not have to be on the sheets ;)
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iv just checked and you dont actually have to show price on worksheet off cleanitup!!!!!! little tab you can click to remove price when inputting custies details
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hi helen,
as for an attendence bonus if they turn up!!! do you mean if they have days off for sick, and i guess arrive on time, or do you mean unauthorised leave, meaning not coming into work without an acceptable reason? if its the latter i just cant accept it and have to sack em! ::)
Days off sick = no sick pay and no attendance bonus
Lateness,unless it went over 15 minutes without a call we were lenient on this as long as it did not happen too often. Once a month for a good worker is not a problem. Anything over 15 minutes and no phone call the vans left without them....... if they then turned up it was up to them whether they go to the van under their own steam and had a reduced days wage, with reduce attendance bonus or did not work at all that day (obviously no pay whatsoever
Not in for no reason? Unfortunately you cannot sack them on the first time for that, you have to go through the proper disciplinary of verbals and written warnings etc etc.
Most of the no turn ups were on Mondays or Fridays (what a surprise....not) so the attendance pay was based on a daily basis. :)
Thank god we don't employ anymore :)
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Helen, you went from employing , what seems like a fair few staff, ... to none?
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Helen, you went from employing , what seems like a fair few staff, ... to none?
Yip......built up where we wanted to be with it, got class work, got class areas and got class prices. As staff left, we didn't replace them and did the work ourselves. Once all the staff had gone we sold it as a business rather than just a "round".
We made what we wanted to make on it, otherwise we wouldn't have sold it. :)
Window cleaning was only part of our cleaning services and we realised that the ever increasing time spent with the hassle of staff on windows could be spent more profitably on the other areas of the business.
We employ for evening cleaning and that's it now.
The rest we do ourselves, carpet & upholstery cleaning, leather restoration and flood restoration work.
Now we have happy easy days and evenings, no sleepless nights, no endless battles with awkward staff, no mad rush on a Monday morning when someone does not turn in, no custies phoning saying "it wasn't very good this time",no damage to equipment or vans, no employers national insurance to pay on top of wages etc etc etc.............
Would I go back to employing on window cleaning.......never ;D
The best thing of how we do it.......
we can sack each other or ourselves if we want and know that the next day we will still be there to complete the work ;D ;D ;D
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helen - have you thought about subbing window cleaning work out instead of employing,
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helen - have you thought about subbing window cleaning work out instead of employing,
George, have you read my last post properly....lol ;D ;D ;D
I certainly wouldn't sub out the window cleaning work now as there is none or very little left ;D
In the past we had subbed out and had problems with standards not being up to ours and being let down at the last moment, so not a lot different from "proper" employing :(
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TO HELEN - How long did it take, in years, till you were sick to death of employing window cleaners? did any take you to a tribunal over the years ?
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sorry not read properly,
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TO HELEN - How long did it take, in years, till you were sick to death of employing window cleaners? did any take you to a tribunal over the years ?
We employed for about 8 years give or take a month or two, no none took us to a tribunal as we did things correctly. :) If we were unsure we spoke to Acas for advise before acting.
If the last person we were to employ had not let us down 15 minutes before he was due to start (yes first day), by saying he had changed his mind.......... ::) we may have been still employing now as we did have some good people along the way. This last one made us sit down and re-think what we were doing, what IT was doing to us and where did we want to go from there........the rest is in the other post :)
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sorry not read properly,
;D ;D
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I know Helen and her other half pretty well I think. We've exchanged work over the years and compared notes as to the state of our businesses, the economy and this forum. If anyone is unsure about employing I think that Helen has always approached this side of things in a very professional manner. There's plenty that could be learnt from her experience.
Have fun at Sherfield Park on Thursday doing the carpets Helen I'm doing the windows inside and out there Friday morning. You should have charged more btw ;0).
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I know Helen and her other half pretty well I think. We've exchanged work over the years and compared notes as to the state of our businesses, the economy and this forum. If anyone is unsure about employing I think that Helen has always approached this side of things in a very professional manner. There's plenty that could be learnt from her experience.
Have fun at Sherfield Park on Thursday doing the carpets Helen I'm doing the windows inside and out there Friday morning. You should have charged more btw ;0).
Thanks Matt, I'm sure we did get loads wrong along the way, but always learnt from that.
Will make sure I put loads of finger prints on the insides for you :P Thanks for the lead though.
Believe you may be doing some charity work later this year, keep us informed and we'll donate :)
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Yes yes, the two of us are doing a charity ride though Rajahstan in December. ;)
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Ok, no extra finger prints for you, didn't have time as next door left a note on the van saying can you come in and do my carpets aswell......
Have left overshoes for your muckie boots, not on our clean carpets you don't. :o
Custie said your feet would be too big for them, so left you 2 pairs ;D ;D