[Sarah S & P Cleaning]

Hey peeps

A while ago i landed a contract cleaning a couple of recreation centres, myself and business partner have got the place looking great and intend to interview, criminal cheack and then place two staff members within the next month.
I have informed the client of my intentions and requested crb forms from them, i have since recieved an email stating that the manager and deputy manager of the rec centres will be interviewing who we choose, theres nothing in our contract that states this and i personally feel that my staff are my responsibilty and that is why businesses take on contractors so that they dont have to worry about the finer details.
Not too impressed by it actually, what do you guys think?

Sarah
S & P Cleaning Services x   

[Jan K]

personally I think its bit cheeky, but if they are just trying to be extra careful and you dont see any real problem with it and want the work i might be inclined to play along with them 

[Sarah S & P Cleaning]

I agree with the cheeky comment, the thing is this is the second years contract next month with them so they know us quite well and they love our work.
We have staff on all our other jobs but have worked personally for them for the last year as its not easy to get staff to work around muddy kids in a rec centre but its now time for us to expand on a large scale hopefully this year and we need to place staff, work with them for a month and then use our time on other things and monitor them to ensure the work is done to our standard.
I have also informed the centre that staff will be on a 3 mth trial and that any abscent staff will be covered by us personally.
Feel a little underminded and that they would confuse our staff slighly as to who is in charge.

[Jan K]

yes thats fair enough, they should be a able to trust that YOU will place the right staff for the job with them, after all if they cant trust you to do that then they should question why they are employing your services in the first place......no offence 

[Fox]

Are you sure they want to 'interview' and not meet?  You say they state they will be interviewing who you choose, does that mean that if they don't like them they will tell you that you can't employ them?

I often set up a short five min meeting with the client and cleaners so that they know who each other are especially as we use communication books as cleaning is often done after hours.  If they just want to meet the cleaner then it's not a problem but like you I wouldn't be happy at a full 'interview'.

I would email the client back and say that you will already have gone through the full interview process and they are welcome to look at the interview notes and refrences but as the cleaner will have been through one interview you don't feel it's fair to put them through another although you would be happy for them to meet before they start.  You should also make sure that the cleaners and client are fully aware that you expect communication about any problem to go through you not each other, tell the client that you need it to be this way for quality control and consistency, if they know anything about management they will understand.

At least it's a compromise.

Fox

[Jan K]

well put Fox