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How to Hire Employees for Your Small Business
Once you have started your business doing the work yourself, it’s a daunting task to consider bringing in workers. You’re used to working alone and your clients are used to you and how you provide the service.
You have invested everything you have in nurturing your clients and nobody wants that to be impacted. In addition, your clients are used to having you in their home and will be plenty nervous at the thought of someone new. All of these issues needs to be considered.
Once you start the process, you may feel like everything is out-of-control. It doesn’t have to be as long as you have a plan to put everything into place before you start hiring.
Here’s a few tips to help you get started:
Systemize your business.
Before you hire, systemize everything in your business and create procedure documents and/or manuals. You will need:
- Employee Manual
- Training Manual
- Safety Manual
- Hiring Procedure
- Job Classifications
It’s easiest to put these manuals together as you’re working as an independent cleaner. The processes are fresh in your mind and you don’t have any outside distractions besides cleaning for your clients. Take the time to do this before you post your first ad. This is important because you will need to manage your workers and this is how you start. Then all you do is manage your workers to the documented procedures in your manuals.
To make this easier for you, start with our professionally-crafted employee handbooks, tailored specifically to the unique needs and challenges of the cleaning industry to ensure a smooth and successful operation. You can review our cleaning company employee handbooks here.
Setup a training program.
This doesn’t need to be elaborate to start, but it needs to establish how and where you will train your recruits. How long will the training take? How will you assess the recruit’s capabilities during training? How will you determine when they are ready to go on permanent status? How will you move them forward to clean in your client homes?
If your recruit isn’t progressing well through the training, let him/her go now and move on to the next recruit. Before you place him or her on permanent status, work with them in your client homes as the last step of the approval process. A Training Manual template is included in our cleaning company employee handbooks bundle.
Notify Clients.
Notify all your clients about your plans to expand your business and how it will impact them. Briefly go over how you will hire, train, and introduce them to their home.
This notification will help them over their fear of “something could go wrong.” They have come to rely on you and now you need to let them know that you value them and will work to achieve a seamless transition.
Once you have all this setup, you can being the hiring process.
Hire on a probation basis.
Hire your first worker as a temp for at least a two-week trial.
If he/she doesn’t work out, you move on to a new worker and you don’t have to worry about personnel issues to let them go. To make this work, inform them of your probation period and what he/she will need to accomplish to win the permanent position.
Take the recruit into your client homes to clean.
You and your new worker clean as a team in your existing client homes.
This provides you with the ability to supervise this worker to ensure the work is being done exactly as it has since you acquired the client. This also gives you the chance to introduce the worker to your clients and solicit feedback from them.
Continue to run ads.
During the trial period with your new worker, you should continue to run your ads for new clients and workers. Book new clients into your schedule and interview and retain worker applications.
Moving the recruit to permanent status.
Once your have finalized your worker as a new employee or permanent contractor, leave him/her in your existing homes to replace you. At this point, you can continue to schedule new clients and work them yourself or with a new worker on their trial period.
Assess and repeat.
Adjust this process if you will be working as 2-person teams.
Before you hire more workers, refine the process. What went right and what could be improved? You need to make sure your hiring process is working before you get in too deep.
You now have the basics of adding workers to your business who can duplicate the quality work you produce. All you have to do is keep repeating it as your business grows.
Manage Your Workers
To control the quality of work, you will need to plan periodic walkthroughs of your client homes or use a survey that will allow clients to tell you how your workers are doing. Don’t forget to update your procedures and manuals every year so they are current.
Everything you need to make this work – employee forms including an employee contract, customer survey forms, and employee manuals – are included in the Business-in-a-Box to start a house cleaning business blueprint.
Need help systemizing your business? Invest in a blueprint to start cleaning!
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