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