[nat1]

Hi, just wondered how many of you work on your jack jones or with staff? Im mainly on the domestic side with just 1 office clean & I am debating whether to get a website & try too expand, which would obviously mean taking on staff.  If you have staff what do you guy's do when your domestic customers are away or cancel due to sickness etc? I mean the staff will be down a job if you have nothing else lined up for them!  Do you pay mileage as well to the staff? & are all your staff mainly CRB checked or do you just ask for references?.  Would you charge roughly around the £11.50 per hour mark for domestic cleans? I currently charge below this at the mo, but if took staff on would have to up the  charges.  Sorry for all the questions, any help would be great!

Ta in advance Nat

PS: how many of you have websites?

[Pristine Clean]

Hi I would say most of us if not all of us have a website or some websites!

To start with you obviously go it alone. Unless you have work pouring out of your ears!

So once you have enough work you then need to take on someone, or more.

There are difficulties. What are they? you may ask

Well you have to have Insurance Employers Liability. You have to pay NI.

Oh and with regards to paying them well.. Question is do you want to keep them. Milage is paid depending on distance. If its above the reasonable amount of travel then yes we pay it.

You have to pay statuary sick pay, Holiday pay and also have to cover the work when they go on holiday or go sick. Especially if it is a commercial client. Giving them a credit simply wont do.

But the most difficult part would be finding a reliable good cleaner. One that actually cleans to a standard that is reasonable and one that is reliable. I dont know if they exist! If you find one let me know... infact let NASA know. They might want to probe it..study its life form.

If you employ and get commercial work, Key jobs are best for cleaners as they want to wiz in but mainly wiz back out again in less than half the time you spculate and go in alot earlier than what is actually allowed without actually getting the vacuum cleaner out of the cleaners cupboard.

So watch out for complaints. So a probabtion period is a must! I would like one for life but the law does not allow that! so set it fir 6 months.

Its not all bad. Honest! There are some good cleaners out there, I just dont seem to get them very often.

Dave

[vacman]

Dave you make it sound like the cleaners should be glad of the job you give them. Sure, there's nothing wrong in expecting them to do the job that you're paying them to do, but the otherside of it is that cleaning isn't exactly a thrilling job and I think understandably when people only work a few hours a day for the minimum wage or a bit more it is going to be hard for them to take it as seriously as we would like them to. You say that you are not attracting the cleaners that you'd like, so what is the feedback and where do the cleaners go after they've left your company?

[Pristine Clean]

Hi Vacman,

You seem to have taken my comment too seriously! I was more just having a joke. While trying to show the downside.

We have alot of cleaners now, and to be honest they are good. Yes some better than others.

Its just I remember years back when I first started in the cleaning industry and advertising for cleaners. It takes time, effort and money hiring the cleaners. You give them a job, and they dont really turn out how you had hoped for.

Just read some of the threads on here... and you might get my joking around.

Then they mess you around... then you think to yourself I should of stayed as a sole trader.

But with hard work and determination we are now a Ltd company and VAT registered, and offer many services including WFP.

We are based in the South East. So we use the jobcentre website. Its free to advertise. The responce rate is good and the candidates are ok. (Not all of them)

I agree its not the best job, I dont think it ever will be. But it could be better.

Oh and not every cleaner is on minimum wage. Some of my cleaners earn £8.50 + you don't get that in the average retail shop. Come to think of it you dont get that sitting on your chair in an office being at the front desk.(Unless its a major company)

However not every cleaning contract can pay £8.50 to a cleaner or cleaners. So yes unfortunatly there are some on minimum wage. Its either that or not take on the contract. It does not matter how good your company is, sometimes a hiring company does not want to pay any more than the absolute minimum

And not everyone wants aglamourous job. I use to have a more glamourous job. I was a computer programmer using java scripts, Visual basic, .Net, cobal, SQL (STRUCTURED QUERY LANGUAGE ) and so working on major projects earning a fair bit in the London .. wearing a flash suit and tie never needing to get my hands dirty. Yes I got fed up with it. I left, went to the USA for a while and came back here to start my cleaning company.

I am also sure there are other people even on this forum that earnt probably 5 X what I earned and are now running a cleaning company.

As for cleaners leaving the company, well yes we have had some leave mainly because of other comitments, or going back to university, Illness. Feed back has been ok. We have had to let a few go as they were not up to the job as we wanted to retain our image and the contracts.

Even in this climate we are pulling in work, mainly through word of mouth from other companies. So at busy times we use agency staff to pull through. I dont know if any of you use agency staff, they cost around £8.91ph + vat

We even take on some of the agency staff. As we get tknow them, we ask them if they would be intersted in either part time or full time, if they say yes we then we approach the agency. It works well for us.

Dave

[nat1]

Thanks for replys, if anybody else has anything to add, please feel free!


Nat

[vacman]

Hello Dave

I was reading it how it was written, i was indifferent either way really  but thanks for your reply. It is such a difficult subject and one of the problems I have noted in the past is that regardless of the hourly rate, if there is only 2 or 3 hours to a shift then some people won't think twice about not turning up if they dont fancy it. Thankfully my days of hiring staff are over (retired now).