Franchises

Motivating Employees To Grow Your Business

Common sense says cultivating happy, engaged employees will make your business grow. But what does it take to make workers happy?

How many times have you ended a business relationship-stopped shopping in a particular store or frequenting a particular restaurant-because the service was bad or you encountered apathetic or sullen employees? And how many times have you recommended a business on the basis of great service or paid higher prices just for the pleasure of dealing with people who are clearly happy to be serving you in some way?

Pleasant, passionate and engaged employees are a key to building a thriving service-industry business. In this Q&A, we talk with Matt Sherman, MaidPro franchise owner in Denver, Colorado-who has among the lowest employee-turnover and customer-attrition rates in the MaidPro system-about the art of cultivating a great work environment and, by extension, happy employees who are passionate about delivering great customer experiences.

Q: Can you comment on how treating your employees well and supporting them in various ways contributes to the growth and success of your business?

A: You might think about building a business where the only thing that matters is your bottom line. You can cut and be as cheap as possible, but that business is not going to grow and survive. For me to enjoy what I am doing and to do it well, my employees need to feel the same way about the business that I do. That only happens when they know I care about them and that I really don't see any difference between my own well being and theirs.

When my employees walk out the door every morning, they know I am there for them and they have my support. They pass that feeling along to my customers. And, when my clients are well cared for, they feel loyal. They recommend us to other people. Being good to your employees, which starts with paying a living wage, just feeds the circle. It's a very logical way to operate. I want my staff to be thrilled, and I want them to tell their friends this is the best place to work.

Q: And do they?

A: Well, we rarely have to go out to hire; usually we have people coming to us. Obviously, there is a certain framework within which we have to work. We cannot pay everyone $100K a year to clean houses; that would be lovely, but most of our clients would not be able to afford that. So, we have our parameters, but within those parameters we do the best we possibly can.

Q: Can you give examples of other things you do to improve quality of life for your employees?

A: We do the all of the 'rah-rah' things; we give public praise and accolades for the great things people do. We do the social things that make our office a fun place to be. We have a big dispatch in the morning where we have 30 people in the office, getting ready to go out for the day. We make sure it is efficient and effective, but we also laugh and smile and make sure people are going out the door in good moods and, if they are not, we check in with them to see what is going on and to make sure everything is okay.

But there are other things we do that-I believe-have a much greater impact. Probably the most important is that we consciously avoid bringing drama into the workplace. For example, we always make sure we have enough employee capacity so that, at any given time, several people can call off work and it won't affect us. We don't have to go crazy when somebody's car doesn't work, or a child is sick, or there is a death in the family and someone needs to travel for a funeral. This is important because, very often, people working in entry-level or lower wage jobs do not have a lot of extra resources from which to draw when things go wrong; things are always a little tighter, a little more hectic, so being able to get time off from work without fear of losing their jobs is a great benefit.

Another thing we do is no-interest loaning. So, for instance, if an employee's car blows up, we might loan them the money to get it repaired or to buy a new one without charging interest. Large, unexpected expenses can really wreak havoc on families that earn lower wages; no-interest loans prevent problems from turning into crises and help our employees avoid the trap of high-interest debt.

Q: So what happens when you are faced with underperforming employees?

A: That is really pretty easy. We have very clear requirements for our employees. We communicate clearly, we train people to our requirements, and we follow up consistently. We are very direct about saying, 'This is the work you need to do in order to perform well and we intend to take a regular measure of that.' If there is an issue, we address it immediately and we have a very consistent process for doing so. Again, there is no drama. We simply say, 'This is not being done. This is something that needs to be done. Is there anything you don't understand about how to get it done? Let us help you. We can retrain you. We can reinforce and do what we need to do.'

If a person's performance cannot improve, that's another situation. It means we have someone who either does not want to or is incapable of doing the work we require. That person may not be able to stay because we are never going to sacrifice the client product. Everyone knows we are very serious about what we do. We have a full time trainer and quality control person; her job is to take people through the hiring, training, and the oversight processes consistently. We always follow through. We don't go outside the rules. If someone is having personal problems, we try to give them the room they need to get them sorted, but, ultimately, we are a business operating for profit and we have to be able to complete our work.

Q: So, is there a particular type of employee that you look to hire?

A: We are very much of the philosophy that we can train most people to clean, but we cannot train them for attitude or personality. We look to hire people who are visibly happy, seem to have a service orientation, and are concerned with the impact they have. If we can find that person, we can train them to clean. We know they will interact well with our clients and they will want to do a great job. If we can succeed at hiring that person, we usually end up with a great employee.

Stay tuned for Part 3 in this interview series in which we look at how and why to work on building a great relationship with your franchise company.